just downloaded the BOOK OF SECRETS from Osho. its over a thousand pages so it will take a while to read. :D

heartbeatsalute

28-04-2012, 07:13 PM

just downloaded the BOOK OF SECRETS from Osho. its over a thousand pages so it will take a while to read. :D

yeah, it is not short, long, but quite interesting with 112 different meditations. Read those
that you like, and are attracted to lonestar.
EDIT: Not everyone is attracted to the SAME meditations.

heartbeatsalute

28-04-2012, 07:36 PM

The very words Vigyana Bhairava Tantra mean
the technique of going beyond consciousness.
Vigyana means consciousness, Bhairava means
the state which is beyond consciousness, and
Tantra means the method: the method of going
beyond consciousness. This is the supreme
doctrine – without any doctrine.

We are unconscious, so all the religious
teachings are concerned with how to go beyond
unconsciousness, how to be conscious. For
example, Krishnamurti, Zen, they are all
concerned with how to create more
consciousness, because we are unconscious.
So how to be more aware, alert? From
unconsciousness, how to move toward
consciousness?

But tantra says that this is a duality --
unconscious and conscious. If you move from
unconsciousness to consciousness, you are
moving from one duality to another. Move
beyond both! Unless you move beyond both
you can never reach the ultimate, so be neither
the unconscious nor the conscious; just go
beyond, just be. Be neither the conscious nor
the unconscious – just BE! This is going beyond
yoga, going beyond Zen, going beyond all
teachings.

'Vigyana' means consciousness, and 'bhairava'
is a specific term, a tantra term for one who has
gone beyond. That is why Shiva is known as
Bhairava and Devi is known as Bhairavi – those
who have gone beyond the dualities...

– Osho
THE BOOK OF SECRETS,Ch. 1

heartbeatsalute

28-04-2012, 08:11 PM

This medittion should be done only in the evening.

Kundalini Meditation TM

This meditation lasts for one hour and has four stages, three with music, and the last without.

Kundalini acts like an energetic shower, softly shaking you free of your day and leaving you refreshed and mellow.

First Stage: 15 minutes

Be loose and let your whole body shake, feeling the energies moving up from your feet. Let go everywhere and become the shaking. Your eyes may be open or closed.

“Allow the shaking; don’t do it. Stand silently, feel it coming and when your body starts trembling, help it but don’t do it. Enjoy it, feel blissful about it, allow it, receive it, welcome it, but don’t will it.
“If you force it will become an exercise, a bodily, physical exercise. Then the shaking will be there but just on the surface; it will not penetrate you. You will remain solid, stone-like, rock-like within. You will remain the manipulator, the doer, and the body will just be following. The body is not the question – you are the question.
“When I say shake, I mean your solidity, your rock-like being should shake to the very foundations so that it becomes liquid, fluid, melts, flows. And when the rock-like being becomes liquid, your body will follow. Then there is no shake, only shaking. Then nobody is doing it; it is simply happening. Then the doer is not.” Osho
View a demo: 56K |64K |100K |200K |300K

Second Stage: 15 minutes

Dance, any way you feel, letting the whole body move as it wishes. Again, your eyes can be open or closed.
View a demo: 56K |64K |100K |200K |300K

You can download the music for this meditation here.
or order the music on CD from here.

Osho Nisarga Kundalini Meditation Instructions - YouTube

heartbeatsalute

28-04-2012, 08:38 PM

About The Rebel

A handbook for the man of the future, The Rebel is a comprehensive guide to Osho as a planetary visionary. In his responses to seekers’ questions he dissects virtually every institution and traditional belief of society, and proposes a truly radical approach to overthrowing the past in order to make way for the future. A fiery exploration of the essential characteristics to be found in the authentic human being--the rebel.

Reviews

"Osho is a thoroughly modern man as much at home with Marx and Engels and humanistic psychology as with the mystical traditions of the East. Indeed, he uses Marx and Maslov, Plato and Heidegger, Freud and Beckett and Lenny Bruce, Playboy jokes as well as Zen and Sufi teaching stories, to make telling critiques of political and religious, psychological and sexual orthodoxies."
- James Gordon, The Washington Post
Excerpt from The Rebel

My name is Bill Clinton and I am in a total jam. If I hide things, I am in trouble. When I stop hiding them, I’m in even bigger trouble.

Osho comments:

It is not only with you, it is with everybody who has been brought up by a hypocritical society. Its whole training is to hide your original face, to wear masks -- masks which are appealing to people, masks which are appreciated by people. And always remembering to adjust according to others people’s ideas.

For millions of years our whole way of life has been of adjustment, of compromise. And compromise with whom? With a crowd -- in which everybody else is also compromising, where nobody is opening up his reality, where everyone is afraid of being himself, because from the very beginning he has been told, "The way you are is not going to be acceptable."

You have to be acceptable, and that means you have to live according to ideals, formalities, mannerisms. You have to be, more or less, an actor in a drama -- and do your best. Never expose yourself, never be naked and nude. Hide yourself -- first from others, and finally from yourself. Force yourself into such darkness that even you cannot see who you are.

Don’t take it as a personal problem; it is our social reality. It is the way we have been manufactured, modified, continuously painted, white-washed -- according to others’ ideas. Just because those ideas are ancient and old, and because man has lived according to those ideas for centuries, it has been thought that they must be right; otherwise people would have rejected them long ago. The longer an ideal has lived, the more valuable it becomes. The more rotten it is, the deadlier it is, the more respectable, the more honorable it must be.

It is difficult to fit with these ideals, it is arduous. It is a tremendous struggle against yourself, against nature, against existence, against life. But you have been told by your parents, by your teachers, by your priests, by everybody -- and with good intentions -- "Don’t assert yourself. Keep yourself out of the way, be a perfect hypocrite, and your life will be a successful life."

In short, it is ambition, success, a desire to fulfill the ego that has been used to force you into darkness. If you want success, if you want Nobel Prizes, if you want to be honored by the society, respected by the masses, then you have to do one thing absolutely: Never be yourself! Hide yourself, and just function according to the expectations of others.

It is this very conditioning that I am absolutely against. I want you to be yourself. It may bring disrespect, it may take away your so-called success. You may become a nobody from being a very famous celebrity. But there will be tremendous satisfaction and contentment, and a great relaxation.

Who cares, in the first place, to be crowned by idiots? It is an insult, it is not respectability.

I remember a day . I had asked the education minister to appoint me to some university. I had all the necessary qualifications -- I was a "Gold Medalist," I had topped the university. He said and he knew me, because before becoming the education minister he was a vice-chancellor; he had heard me speak in his university. He had appreciated me very much, and he had told me, "Any time you need my help, I will be available."

I said, "You remember, it is because of your promise, I have approached you directly."

He said, "That’s right, and I will do everything. You put in the application."

So I wrote the application. He said, "Now a character certificate is needed."

I said, "That is difficult."

He said, "What is the difficulty? Can’t you get a character certificate from your vice-chancellor? Or from the head of the Department of Philosophy, or the dean of the Faculty of Arts? It is just a formality."

I said, "It is not a question of formality. I cannot get a character certificate from the vice-chancellor. He is not a man of character, how can I ask him to give me a character certificate? I will have to find a man -- and it is going to be a very difficult task -- to whom I can give a character certificate. Then only is it worth having his character certificate for me."

He said, "My God. You are making unnecessary trouble for yourself, and for me."

I said, "Do you think you deserve a character certificate from me? I know you well; otherwise I would have asked, ’Write a character certificate for me.’ Why should I go anywhere else? You are here, the education minister himself writes character certificates -- but I will not accept it. I know all the ins and outs of your life. I have been in the university where you have been a vice-chancellor, and there have been very few vice-chancellors who were so corrupt as you were. It is your corruption that has brought you to the post of education minister."

There is no point being worried about other people; their opinions mean nothing.

The only thing that matters in life is your own opinion about yourself, your own respect for yourself. Nobody can destroy your dignity then, because it is not dependent on anybody’s opinion.

Come out in the open -- even if it goes against the whole world. Enjoy your original being.

To me, that’s what rebellion is, that’s what religion is.

A man who had lived an average sort of life died, and went to meet Saint Peter.
"Can I come into heaven?" he asked.

"Heaven?" said Peter. "This is not it; heaven is much higher up, and can only be reached by very long ladders. You take this chalk and start climbing," he added. "For each sin of adultery, fornication, lechery or whatever, chalk off one rung."

The man kept on going for ages; his legs ached, his arms ached, and he met no one. All at once, he saw a robed figure descending the neighboring ladder.

"Excuse me," he said to the figure, "are you by any chance an angel, going back for more candidates?"
"No, indeed. I am the pope, going back for more chalk."

All these popes, and kings, and queens, and presidents if you knew their inner reality, you would not accept awards from them; it is a humiliation. You would simply like to be a nobody, but utterly contented, satisfied with yourself, with your nature, enjoying it in utter innocence.

Hymie Goldberg, on a visit to India, was appalled by the country’s chaotic traffic. He asked his host why it was so disorderly.

"In some countries," his host said, "they drive on the right, in others on the left. Here we drive in the shade."

You want these stupid people to be respectful towards you, you want their appreciation. They are utterly unconscious. They don’t know themselves, and they are prescribing a lifestyle for you -- and you accept it.

A man approaches a woman on the sidewalk, "Excuse me, madam," he says shyly, "but did you know that one of your tits is hanging out?"

"Oh, my God," she cries, "I left my baby on the bus."

THE REBEL, OSHO

heartbeatsalute

28-04-2012, 08:59 PM

Terrence Mckenna says that reality is made up of language.
This is what Osho says:

The whole language depends on time – past, future, present.

Language is a creation of the mind, time is also a creation of the mind.
When you drop language, time disappears.

When you drop thinking, there is no past, no present, no future.

You go beyond time, there is no time. When there is no time, there is eternity.

When there is no time, you have moved into the world of the eternal. The truth is eternal.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE COUNTRIES THAT HAVE
REJECTED YOUR PRESENCE UNDER THE ILLUSION OF BEING POLITICALLY AND
ECONOMICALLY INDEPENDENT FROM AMERICA, WHEN IN FACT WE KNOW THINGS ARE
TO THE CONTRARY?

MAYBE SOME OF THESE GOVERNMENTS HAVE BEEN EFFECTIVELY
DECEIVED AND SHOULD LOOK INTO WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING AND SEE HOW THEY
ARE BEING USED FOR AMERICA’S ABOMINABLE CRIME AGAINST WISDOM.

Humanity has lived only under the illusion of freedom. But there is no such thing as freedom as far
as the history of man up to now is concerned. Slaveries have changed; new forms of slavery have
taken their place, but freedom has not happened. Freedom is still a dream. There was a time that
man was being sold in the markets just like any other thing. We thought that was slavery, and it took
thousands of years to get rid of it – but we could only get rid of the form. The content remained.

Now you don’t purchase a man for his whole life, you purchase him as a servant for five hours a day
or six hours a day. And it seems that it is freedom – in fact it has been useful to the owners. To
purchase a man completely... you cannot use him twenty-four hours a day, he will be working only
for those five to six hours. The remaining time you have paid for unnecessarily; sometimes he will
be sick, and some day he will become old. And he can die in an accident and your whole investment
is lost.

So the change of slavery has not helped humanity, but has helped only the owners – the slaves are
still slaves, part-time slaves.

There used to be political dependence all over the world. Those empires have collapsed and that
has given a great illusion to nations, that now they have freedom. And whenever some illusion is
beautiful you want it to be true, you want to believe in it; but whether you believe in it or not, an
illusion is an illusion – it makes no difference.

I have seen in this world tour that great nations which are proud of their independence are simply
living an illusion – and they are not deceiving anybody but themselves.

I have never been in Germany. I have done no harm to anybody. I have not broken any law of
Germany – and their government decides that I cannot enter Germany.

The pressure is American. After the second world war half of Germany remained with the Soviet
Union; it was under the armies of the Soviet Union, and they never left it. So it looks like half
of Germany has remained dependent while the other half, which was under the American forces,
has been given – on the surface – political freedom, democracy; but Germany remains the biggest
military base of America in Europe.

Billions of dollars are being poured into nations, which they can never repay; and America never
wants them to be able to repay it, so that they remain burdened, under economic pressure. And
America has promised them billions of dollars more in the coming years. Their whole economy is
now in the hands of America. And this is a far more dangerous slavery than political slavery used to
be.

In fact, in a country like India... Winston Churchill was not in favor of giving independence to India;
India was the biggest treasure in the British empire – to lose it was dangerous. And Winston Churchill
was right: once you give freedom to India your whole empire will collapse, because then others will
start asking for freedom, and there is no reason to say no to them.

But after Winston Churchill, Attlee came into power, and he was a far more economically minded
person than Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill was past-oriented; his mind was still Victorian, he
was an orthodox man.

Attlee could see the stupidity – that Britain was carrying such an economic burden. Nations like
India were going to explode in tremendous overpopulation, and the whole blame of their poverty,
starvation, death, would be on the shoulders of Britain. It was absolutely unwise and inadvisable to
keep these countries under the British empire.

But you can create a different kind of thing so that you remain the master in a secret way. There are
two great advantages: one, because there is no political dependence, there is no question of any
revolution against you. Secondly, you can keep these countries still dependent by controlling their
economy.

His plan was solid. You will be surprised that
Mountbatten was sent to India by Attlee, as viceroy,
with the message: ”Be as quick as possible to get out of India. We don’t want to be blamed for
India’s poverty – and it is going to be of uncontrollable proportions.”

At that time India had only four hundred million people. Now India has nine hundred million people –
it has doubled – and by the end of the century it will go beyond one billion people. For the first time it
will become the largest country in the world as far as population is concerned. Up to now China has
been leading, but China has proved more sane by introducing birth control, because it is no longer
under any religious superstitions.

But India still lives under so many religious superstitions – which all agree that birth control is against
God. By the end of the century almost five hundred million people in India will be dying of starvation.
And there seems to be no way to help them.

Attlee was right to get out of it as quickly as possible; otherwise the whole responsibility would be
Britain’s. Attlee had decided that 1948 was to be the deadline. But Mountbatten, seeing India,
thought that Attlee’s calculations were just theoretical; it was already dying. He hurried, and rather
than waiting for 1948 he gave India freedom in 1947.

India thinks it has become free, and it is totally wrong. Now it is more unfree than ever. Now it is
dependent on the Soviet Union for its technology. Now it is dependent on America for its financial
help. Now it is even getting dependent on nations like Japan. And the facade of freedom continues.
If the Soviet Union pulls itself out of India, India will collapse this very moment.

The same is the situation everywhere, even here in this small, beautiful country consisting of a very
nice group of nonviolent people. They believe in democracy, they think they have a democracy; but
the reality is something different.

Just five days ago all the three parties that make the coalition government, and the president, agreed
on my permanent stay here. And as the American ambassador heard about it, immediately he
enquired of America, ”What has to be done?”

He phoned the president here and said, ”It is up to you to choose – you are free, you have a
democracy; we cannot force anything upon you – but this is the message from the White House,
that if this man is given a permanent stay here in Uruguay, then all the loans that we were going to
give you” – which are billions of dollars in the coming year and the year after – ”will be stopped.

”Secondly we will demand that you return the billions of dollars that we have given to you in the past.
If you cannot return them, then we are going to increase the rate of interest. You can choose – you
are free.”

Now a poor country, a small country, even though they wanted me to be here, cannot afford it: the
country will die if all this help stops and they have to pay back old loans, which they have no means to
do. Immediately we were informed that it would not be possible, and the White House was informed
that the blackmail worked.

It is sheer blackmail. But I am going to expose it to the whole world. It has been done in such a way
that nobody will know: the people of Uruguay will not know, even the people in the government will
not know. Only the president knows that he has been blackmailed, threatened.
And when the message was received by Washington that they have changed their mind... just the
next day they were rewarded, rewarded with an immediate loan of one hundred and fifty million
dollars – which was not on the budget, which was a sudden surprise. And a two hundred million
dollar loan from the past has been dropped, erased; it will not be asked for again. So in all, the
reward is three hundred and fifty million dollars extra. And the loans that have been decided on
before will continue, but these three hundred million dollars...

If the president has any sense of honor, he should give me my commission! Without me, he would
not have got these three hundred million dollars. And if this is going to happen, I can move from one
country to another country; I have got a good business.

But this is not democracy, and this is not freedom.

In fact, going around the world I have come to the conclusion that there are only two countries in
the world: the United States of America and the Soviet Union. All other countries are just puppets.
They have been given a little rope and they call it ”freedom,” but the rope is either in Soviet hands or
in American hands.

You must have seen a puppet show – when puppets dance, hug each other, do all kinds of things,
and just behind the curtain is the puppeteer who goes on pulling their strings. If those puppets
had souls they would have thought, ”My God, this girl looks beautiful; I’m falling in love” – but the
puppeteer is doing the whole thing. Neither you are falling in love nor the girl is falling in love, but
to the public and to yourself too... The puppeteer is managing the show, so you are hugging the girl
and kissing the girl, and even saying to her, ”I love you and I will love you forever.”

In India there has been a long tradition which believes that we are all puppets; God is the puppeteer.
He pulls strings – we dance, we sing, we rejoice, we weep, we cry, we are miserable, we are happy.
Everything is in his hands.

I am against the whole idea, because if there is a puppeteer then man does not exist; then man has
no freedom, only a facade. But this seems to be the situation in many fields. And they manage it
very beautifully – silently, underground – while on the surface everything is calm and quiet.

Uruguay will never know that a stranger was here, that he had loved the country and the people and
he wanted to stay here. And he was absolutely harmless.

But in America’s eyes I am the most dangerous man. That’s what the American ambassador told the
president: ”He is the most dangerous man because he is extremely intelligent, and he is anarchist.

And he is powerful enough to change the minds of men. So don’t take on this danger unnecessarily.
Even we could not afford this danger – you are a small country; you will repent.”
I am not a terrorist. I don’t make bombs, and I don’t teach violence.

I teach love.

I teach meditation.

I teach silence.

But for the people who are in power these are more dangerous than nuclear weapons because if
people start meditating, they will not remain mediocre – as they are. They will become intelligent
enough to see that idiots are ruling them, and that those idiots have immense power of destruction
in their hands.

If people are silent, peaceful and loving, they will throw out all these politicians – who are nothing
but warmongers.

This is the ”danger.” But I think we need such dangerous people in the world, because only these
dangerous people can save the world from being destroyed in a third world war.
But it is easy to create fear. And they did it all the way along: all over Europe, in each country I
reached they created the idea that, ”This man is dangerous” – so dangerous that England wouldn’t
allow me even to have an overnight stay in the first-class lounge of the airport.
Fear seems to be infinite.

What could I have done? I reached there in the middle of the night and I was going to leave the
next morning. Just sleeping in the lounge of the airport I would have destroyed England’s morality,
England’s church, England’s government? I was ”a dangerous man.”

That’s what was told to the British parliament – because the next day the question was asked: ”Why
was he not allowed to stay in the lounge?” And the answer given was, ”He is a dangerous man.” And
nobody bothered to enquire, ”What are the implications of ‘a dangerous man’? What do you mean
by ‘a dangerous man’?”

And the same government allowed Ronald Reagan to use England as a base to bombard a poor
and small country, Libya – which was absolutely innocent. And the bombardment was done in the
night in a civilian area. To England that was not dangerous. But the reality is, England is under
America’s economic empire as much as Germany.

The fall of Adolf Hitler and his regime was not the victory of England, was not the victory of France,
was not the victory of anybody else than America. With the disappearance of Adolf Hitler, the whole
of Europe’s freedom disappeared: they all became economically dependent on America.

I have been in Ireland. Perhaps the man at the airport had drunk too much beer so he simply... we
simply wanted one day’s stay to give a rest to the pilots – he gave us seven days. He did not bother
who we were, what the purpose was. He must have been really drunk.

We reached a hotel, and in the morning the police came, asked for the passports, and canceled
those seven days.

And we said, ”We will make an immediate exposure to the world news media. You have given us
seven days, and you have canceled them without giving any reason. None of our people has gone
out of the hotel; they have not committed any crime. You cannot do this.”

They were afraid, because they were caught in a dilemma. They had given seven days; now they
had canceled them, and they didn’t have any reason to show why. So they said, ”You can stay as
long as you want, but don’t go outside the hotel.”

”But,” I said, ”that will be illegal because we will not have any visa.”
They said, ”Nobody will be bothered by it; you just remain in the hotel.” We remained there for
fifteen days because we needed some time. Our people were working in Spain and the Spanish
government was willing to give me permanent residence.

And what happened in Uruguay happened in Spain, exactly the same pattern: they agreed, and
immediately, within one hour, they said, ”No, it is not possible.” We never came to know exactly what
happened – but now we know.

Here in Uruguay, because it is a small country, everybody knows everybody else; and we had made
contact with all the political parties, all the ministers – who were all favorable except one man, the
foreign minister. Seeing that everybody was favorable, he also voted in favor.

He was functioning as an American agent – to create a situation that I should not be given permanent
residence – so that America could appear to have nothing to do with it. He had his own price, and
the price was to be that America was going to choose him as secretary-general of the U.N. That
was the price. I’m sorry for the poor man. He lost his reward because he voted for me – seeing that
everybody was favorable.

Now we know what would have happened in Spain: the same story. For one month they were
continuously saying, ”Everything is ready, just a signature has to happen.” So we just wanted time: if
Spain was ready we could move from Ireland to Spain. We stayed in Ireland for fifteen days without
any visa.

We left Ireland; and the day we left, in the parliament of Ireland the minister concerned, the minister
of the interior, informed the members that we had never been in Ireland.

One can see how politicians can be hypocrites, how they can manage ugly lies. And this is such a
lie – because we can prove that we were in the hotel. When we were leaving the hotel the press
was present and photographers were present. They took photographs of us in front of the hotel and
they took my statement. And the hotel is fifteen miles away from the airport.

But the minister deceived the parliament and deceived the country. And perhaps... he must have
forced the journalists not to publish my statement and not to publish the pictures; otherwise I don’t
see how he could have managed it. And these are all civilized countries, cultured people, educated
people – and flatly lying, that I had never been in Ireland. And he knew, his government knew, the
chief of police knew.

I am thinking that once I get settled somewhere then I will start... one by one each country has to be
dragged into court for their lies, for calling me ”dangerous,” for saying yes and then refusing after one
hour. I am going to expose it to the world for the simple understanding that there is no democracy
anywhere.

Just yesterday I received an invitation from
the prime minister of Mauritius, that he would like me
to be in Mauritius. I told my secretary to contact him and make him aware of all the situations that
he will have to face, because again one month... He will go through all the procedures, and then
finally will come the American hand. ”So make him aware that we have gone through this process
in Spain, in Uruguay, and this has happened.”

In Germany they did not allow my entry – even a tourist visa.

In Greece they allowed me for four weeks, and just after fifteen days suddenly I was arrested without
being told any reason. And they threatened – because I was asleep – they threatened my people,
”We will put the house on fire.” And they showed them dynamite, saying, ”We will use dynamite if
you don’t just give Osho to us. Immediately he should leave this country.”

John ran to me. He woke me up, and he said, ”This is the situation. What should we do?” While he
was saying this to me, the police started throwing big rocks at the windows, at the doors, breaking
the house. It seemed almost as if bombs were exploding.

I came down, and I told those people, ”You are just being unnecessarily inhuman. If I am asleep
they have to wake me up; I have to dress and come down to you. Couldn’t you have waited for five
minutes? And what is the reason for cutting my visa short? I have been here fifteen days, and I have
not left the house.”

And he said it was because the archbishop felt that I was dangerous. I could destroy the morality of
people, I could destroy their tradition, I could destroy their church; and because he was the head of
the church, the government had to listen to him. And the president decided.

I said, ”That’s perfectly okay that you listen to him, but the president should have asked the
archbishop: ‘Two thousand years you have been teaching people morality and he will be able to
destroy it in two weeks?’ Then your morality is not worth anything. And what kind of church have
you created in two thousand years which is afraid of a single man who has not left the house, who
has not talked to anybody of your country, who has been talking only to his own people? Why should
you be worried?”

And the archbishop, who may be sermonizing in the churches, ”Love your enemy as yourself,” was
threatening in the church that if I didn’t leave the country I would be burned alive. On the one hand,
”Love your enemy” – and I am not even an enemy, just a tourist. But certainly because in their BIBLE
there is no saying, ”Love the tourist,” naturally it does not contradict their religion; they can burn the
tourist.

And he was saying that I had been sent from hell directly as a messenger to destroy the Greek
Orthodox church. I said, ”I am not that special, I am just a human being. To be a special messenger
of hell then I would not need any tourist visa. And your government or you would not be able to
prevent me either, because for eternity your God has not been able to destroy the devil.

”Your God is omnipotent, he is all-powerful, and the poor devil is not omnipotent and he is not in any
way comparable to God; but even God has not been able throughout eternity to destroy the devil.
We don’t think he will ever be able to destroy him in the future either, because neither God exists nor
the devil exists; neither heaven exists nor hell exists.” These are all lies perpetuated for centuries to
dominate the mind of man. I call this spiritual slavery.

So there are so many kinds of slaveries, and the deepest is spiritual slavery – of which you are not
aware. If you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Jew... You will never think that your
being a Jew is a slavery, you will think this is your heritage. You will think being a Hindu is a great
pride, that you are part of the oldest religion in the world. It simply means you are the oldest slave in
the world; you have been in slavery for ten thousand years and still you are not aware that you are
a slave.

Spiritual slavery is the most dangerous because it is not from outside. Your hands are not
handcuffed. The chains are not visible, they are deep in your mind; and they have been perpetually
enforced from the very childhood.

As far as I am concerned, I don’t see there is any freedom anywhere. And freedom is the greatest
value and the greatest achievement in life. Everyone should be free from all kinds of fetters –
political, economic, psychological, spiritual.

Unless we can create a world which is really free, we are living only in an illusion of freedom.

THE PATH OF THE MYSTIC, OSHO

heartbeatsalute

28-04-2012, 11:05 PM

Or, take the question of drugs. I am not in support of drugs, but I am not against them either. I am not in
support of Timothy Leary, I don't think that you can attain samadhi by drugs -- about that I am absolutely
certain. No one has ever attained samadhi by- drugs, notwithstanding what Aldous Huxley and others say.

It is too cheap, and through chemicals there is no possibility to attain the ultimate. But I am aware that drugs
can help in a certain way. They can give you a glimpse; they cannot give you the reality, but they can give
you a glimpse of the reality, and that glimpse can become a breakthrough.

That glimpse can uproot you
from your past and can send you on a search for the real. If you have seen God, even in your dream, your
whole life will be transformed. Of course, the God in a dream is a dream, but the next morning you will start
looking into the world -- where can you find this phenomenon that has happened in your dream?

Many people start their journey towards God, truth, samadhi, because they have had a certain glimpse
somewhere. Maybe through drugs, maybe through sexual orgasm, maybe through music, or sometimes
accidentally. Sometimes a person falls from a train, is hit on the head and he has a glimpse. I'm not saying
make a method of that! But I know this has happened. A certain centre in the head is hit by accident and the
person has a glimpse, an explosion of light. Never again will he be the same; now he will start searching for
it.
This is possible. The probable is no longer probable, it has become possible. Now he has some inkling,
some contact. He cannot rest now.

I am not for drugs, I am not against drugs. But still, in this community, in my commune, drugs cannot be
allowed. Politicians have never been very intelligent and one should not expect too much from them. In fact,
only stupid people become interested in politics. If they were intelligent they would not be in politics at all.
So just for some ordinary, small thing the whole movement cannot be destroyed. That would be foolish.

After a hundred years my attitude that drugs cannot be allowed in the Ashram will be thought
anti-revolutionary. Naturally, I know it is anti-revolutionary. So let it be here on the record.

The Hasidic Masters knew it well. It is inhuman, anti-revolutionary. not to allow women to participate
in ecstatic religious ceremonies, in ecstatic dances. But that society was very much against it. Because of
this the whole movement would have died. So they had to prohibit it.

Buddhism died in India. Do you know why? It was because Buddha finally allowed women into his
order. He himself is reported to have said, 'My religion would have lived at least five thousand years, but
now it will not live more than five hundred, because I am taking a very great risk.' Just allowing woman into
his order was such a risk that Buddha said, 'The life of my religion is reduced by four thousand, five
hundred years -- at the most it will last only five hundred years.' And it happened exactly that way. For only
five hundred years Buddhism lived, and that life was also not at the climax. not at the optimum. Every day
the life was slowing down, every day death was coming closer and closer. What happened?

The society. Society has long been male-oriented. To allow women into a religious order was to destroy
the old hierarchy, the superiority of man. Even a man like Mahavir, a very revolutionary man, is reported to
have said that women cannot enter moksha directly as women. First they will have to be born as men and
then.... So no woman has entered into the Jaina moksha, into nirvana, directly as a woman. First she has to
change her body, take a male shape and form, and then she can enter.

Why should Mahavir say this? Society, the politics of the country, the priests and the politicians, they
were too chauvinistic. Some compromise was needed, otherwise they would not allow anything. Mahavir
lived naked, but he himself did not allow any women to go naked because the society was not ready to
accept even him in his nudity. By and by people accepted him, grudgingly, reluctantly, but to accept the
idea that women could go naked would have been too much.

And because Mahavir said, 'Unless you leave everything -- even clothes -- unless you are as innocent as
a child, as you were on the first day you were born, you cannot enter into my kingdom of God,' he had to
say that women Could not enter directly. If he had said that women could enter directly then a few
courageous women would have come forward and would have thrown off their clothes also -- would have
become naked. Just to avoid nude women he had to make a very false statement, untrue. And I know he
knew that it was untrue -- I know because I make many untrue statements.

But we have to exist in a society,
in a particular state, i n a particular confused state, in a particular neurotic state. If you live with mad people
you have to make a few compromises. If you live with mad people at least you have to pretend that you are
also mad.

Narendra is here. His father went mad thirty or forty years ago. He escaped from the house. After a few
months he was caught in Agra and put into jail with mad people all around. There was a special jail in
Lahore, only for mad people. He said that for nine months everything went okay because he was also mad.

After nine months, just by accident he drank a whole jug of phenoil -- a mad man -- he found it in the
bathroom and he drank it. That gave him vomits, nausea, diarrhea. Because of that diarrhea he was throwing
things out for fifteen days continuously, and his madness disappeared then the real problem began, because
he was amongst mad people. Now for the first time he became aware of where he was -- somebody was
pulling his leg, somebody was hitting him on his head, and people were talking and dancing. And he was no
longer mad. Those three months when he was not mad and was living with mad people, were the most
painful; they were deep anguish and anxiety. He couldn't sleep.

And he would go to the authorities and he would say, 'Now let me out because I am no longer mad!' And
they wouldn't listen because every mad person says that -- that he is no longer mad. So that was not proof.
He had to comploete his sentence of one year.

He told me that he could never forget those three months; they were a continuous nightmare. But for
nine months he was perfectly happy because he was also mad.
You cannot conceive of what happens to a person when he becomes a Buddha or a Baal-Shem in a
country, in a world, which is absolutely mad. He is no longer mad but he has to follow your laws, otherwise
you will kill him. He has to make compromises. Of course he cannot hope that you will make compromises
with him. You are not in a state in which you can think. But he can think. Only the higher can make
compromises with the lower, only the greater can make compromises with the lower, only the wise person
can make compromises with stupid people.

So it happened that women have never been accepted. It is only just in this century, very recently, that
women are coming out of the dark night of the past history.
I have heard.
It happened that when Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel, Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India,
went to Israel. And when Indira Gandhi visited Israel she was welcomed by Golda Meir.
After seeing all the historical sights, Mrs. Gandhi said, 'I would like to visit a synagogue.' 'By all
means,' answered the Israeli Prime Minister.

Two weeks later, Mrs. Gandhi stood before her cabinet. 'What did you learn in Israel?' asked one of
the members. 'Many things,' answered the Indian Prime Minister. 'But most of all I learned that in Israeli
synagogues the men pray on the first floor and the Prime Ministers worship in the balcony.'

Two women, but she thought that prime ministers worship in the balcony and men on the floor.
Once a thing settles it is very difficult to change it, even for a prime minister. Even for a prime minister
it is difficult to change the traditional way.

The Hasids were a new way, but rather than destroying the whole movement they chose to go with the
society and its rules and its regulations. At least let the message reach to men. If it cannot reach to women
right now, later on it will -- but at least let the message be rooted on the earth.

I am existing here in a very alien and strange world. I would like to give you many things but I cannot,
because you yourself will resist. I would like to make you aware of many things in your being, but you will
be against me. I have to go very slowly, I have to be very roundabout; it cannot be done directly.

Just see. I have done what Pratima was enquiring about in relation to Hasidism. I have done It. In my
community, men and women are no longer separate. That's why Indians have stopped coming to my
Ashram. They cannot come. When they used to come, their questions were more or less all concerned about
what type of Ashram this was -- men and women mixing and meeting, holding each other's hands, going
together? Even after meditations hugging, kissing each other? What type of things were these? This is not
good.

They used to come to me and say, 'This is not good, this should not be allowed. Osho, you should
interfere.' I never interfered because to me there is nothing wrong -- man and woman should not be made in
any way distinct. They are not separate, nobody is higher and nobody is lower. They are different but equal.

Difference is beautiful, it has to be there. The difference has to be enhanced, but the equality has to be
saved. And to me, love is a way towards God.

I didn't listen to them. By and by they disappeared. Now only very courageous Indians can enter here.
Now only a few Indians can enter here, those who have no repressed mind in them, who are post-Freudians
-- only they can enter here. But Inida as a whole is pre-Freudian. Freud is still unknown in India. Freud has
not yet entered into the Indian soul.

But I have done it. And I am a Hasid, so you can forgive the old Hasids. Time was not ripe at that time;
even now it is very difficult. I have to encounter difficulties every day. For every small thing there are
difficulties. Those difficulties could be avoided if I behaved in an orthodox way. I cannot behave in an
orthodox way -- because then there is no point in my being here, then I could not deliver the message to you
-- and I cannot be absolutely revolutionary because then there would be no possibility of something
happening between you and me.

And I am not in any way interested in being a martyr because that too seems to me to be a sort of
masochism. People who are always seeking to become martyrs are not really aware of what they are doing
-- they are seeking suicide. I am not a martyr. I love life, I love all that is implied in life, and the original
Hasid Masters were as much in love with life as I am. That's why I have chosen to talk about them. When I
choose to talk about some path, I choose it only because it appeals to me tremendously.

The Hasids were not people who wanted to become political revolutionaries. They were not reformists.
They were not trying to reform the society, they were trying to bring a mutation to the individual soul. And
they had to exist in the society. Remember that always.

But then what happens whenever a tradition gets settled? Now Hasidism is a settled tradition, now it
itself has become an orthodoxy. Now the time is ripe. If the community exists in New York -- a Hasidic
community exists in New York -- now the time is ripe, but now they themselves have become orthodox.

THE ART OF DYING, CH.6, OSHO

heartbeatsalute

28-04-2012, 11:14 PM

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Osho - Latihan

Osho - Latihan is the first step towards Mahamudra

Osho - when the wife and the husband, or the lovers, or the partners, start vibrating in a rhythm, their beats of their heart and body become together, it becomes a harmony -- then orgasm happens, then they are no more two. That is the symbol of yin and yang: yin moving into yang, yang moving into yin; man moving into the woman, the woman moving into the man. Now they are a circle and they vibrate together, they pulsate together. Their hearts are no more separate, their beats are no more separate; they have become a melody, a harmony. It is the greatest music possible; all other musics are just faint things compared to it, shadow things compared to it.

This vibration of two as one is orgasm. When the same thing happens, not with another person, but with the whole existence, then it is Mahamudra, then it is the great orgasm. It happens. I would like to tell you how you can try it, so that the Mahamudra becomes possible, the great orgasm.

In Indonesia, there is a very rare man, Bapak Subuh. He has come unknowingly to a method known as latihan. He stumbled upon it, but latihan is one of the oldest tantra methods. It is not a new phenomenon; latihan is the first step towards Mahamudra. It is allowing the body to vibrate, allowing the body to become energy, nonsubstantial, nonmaterial; allowing the body to melt and dissolve the boundaries.

Bapak Subuh is a Mohammedan but his movement is known as "Subud." That word is Buddhist. "Subud" comes from three words: "su," "bu," "dha" -- "su" means sushila, "bu" means Buddha, "dha" means dharma; Subud means sushila-Buddha-dharma. The meaning is: the law of great virtue derived from Buddha, Buddha's law of great virtue. This is what Tilopa calls the great teaching.

Latihan is simple. It is the first step. One has to stand relaxed, loose and natural. It is good if you stand alone and nobody is there to disturb you. Close your room, stand alone. If you can find someone who has already stepped into latihan, his presence can be helpful, his very presence works like a catalytic agent, he becomes the opener. So somebody who is advanced a little already can open you very easily; otherwise, you can open yourself also. A little more time will be needed, that's all. Otherwise an opener is good.

If an opener is standing just by your side, he starts his latihan: you simply stand and his energy starts pulsating with you, his energy starts moving around you, like a fragrance he surrounds you -- suddenly you feel the music. Just as when there is a good singer, or somebody is playing on an instrument, you start beating your feet, or you start tapping the chair, or you start pulsating with it -- just like that, a deep energy inside him moves and the whole room and the quality of the room is changed immediately.

You are not to do anything; you are simply to be there, loose and natural, just waiting for something to happen. And if your body starts moving, you have to allow it, you have just to cooperate and allow. The cooperation should not become too direct, it should not become a pushing; it should remain just an allowing. Your body starts moving suddenly, as if you are possessed, as if a great energy from the above has descended on you, as if a cloud has come and has surrounded you -- and now you are possessed by that cloud, and the cloud is penetrating within your body, and your body starts taking movements. Your hands are raised, you make subtle movements, you start a small dance, soft gestures; your body is taken up.

If you know anything about automatic writing it will be easy to follow what happens in latihan. In automatic writing you take a pencil in your hand, you close your eyes, you wait. Suddenly you feel a jerk in the hand: your hand is possessed, as if something has entered. You are not to do anything, because if you do then it will not be from the beyond; it will be your doing. You have simply to allow. Loose and natural -- Tilopa's words are wonderful; they cannot be improved upon. Loose and natural, you wait with the pencil, with closed eyes; when the jerk comes and the hand starts moving, you have to allow it, that's all. You have not to resist it; because you can resist. The energy is very subtle, and, in the beginning, not very powerful. If you just stop it, it can be stopped. And the energy is not aggressive; if you don't allow, it will not come. If you doubt, it will not happen, because with doubt, your hand will be resisting. With doubt, you will not allow, you will fight. So that's why trust is so meaningful, shraddha. You simply trust and leave your hand; by and by the hand starts moving, now the hand starts making wriggles on the paper -- allow it.

Then somebody simply asks a question, or you yourself ask a question; let the question be there, loose in the mind, not very persistent, not forcing; just raise the question and wait. And suddenly the answer is written. If ten persons try, at least three persons will be absolutely capable of automatic writing. Thirty percent of people are not aware that they can become so receptive. And this can become a great force in your life. Explanations differ... what happens -- that is not important. The deepest explanation that I find true is, your own highest center possesses your lowest center; your own highest peak of consciousness catches hold of your lowest unconscious mind. You ask and your own inner being answers. Nobody else is there, but your inner being, which you don't know, is very superior to you.

Your own innermost being is the possibility of your ultimate flowering. It is as if the flower takes possession of the seed and answers. The seed doesn't know, but the flower... as if your possibility takes possession of your actuality and answers; as if your ultimate potentiality takes possession of whatsoever you are, and answers. Or the future takes possession of the past, the unknown takes possession of the known, the formless takes possession of the form -- all metaphors, but I feel you will understand the significance -- as if your old age takes possession of your childhood, and answers.

The same happens in latihan with the whole body. In automatic writing you only leave your hand loose and natural. In latihan you leave your whole body loose and you wait, and you cooperate, and suddenly you feel an urge. The hand is raising by itself, as if somebody is pulling it by some invisible strings -- allow it. And the leg goes moving; you take a turn, you start a small dance; very chaotic, with no rhythm, with no manipulation, but by and by, as you get deeper, it takes its own rhythm. Then it is no longer chaotic, it takes its own order, it becomes a discipline, but not forced by you. This is your highest possibility taking possession of your lowest body and moving it.

Latihan is the first step. And, by and by, you will feel so beautiful doing it that you will feel a meeting is happening between you and the cosmos. But this is only the first step. That's why in Subud something is missing. The first step in itself is very beautiful, but it is not the last step. I would like you to complete it. For thirty minutes at least -- sixty will be wonderful; by and by from thirty you reach to sixty minutes of latihan dancing.

In sixty minutes your body, from pore to pore, from cell to cell, is cleansed; it is a catharsis, you are completely renewed, all the dirt is burned. That's what Tilopa says: In Mahamudra all one's sins are burned. The past is thrown into fire. It is a new birth, a rebirth. And you feel energy showering all over you, in and out. And the dance is not only outside. Soon, when you get attuned in it, you will feel an inner dance also. Not only that your body is dancing, inside the energy is dancing; and they both cooperate with each other. And then a pulsation happens, and you feel you are pulsating with the universe -- you have found the universal rhythm.

Thirty to sixty minutes is the time: start with thirty, end with sixty. Somewhere in between you will have the right time. And you will come to know: if you feel attuned nearabout forty minutes, then that is your right time; if you feel attuned at twenty minutes, then that is your right time. Then your meditation must go beyond that: if you feel tuned at ten minutes, twenty minutes will do; if you feel tuned at fifteen minutes, thirty minutes will do. Do it double, don't take any chances, so really you are completely cleaned. And end it with a prayer.

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Psychic-World/OshoMahamudra1.jpg

Osho on Mahamudra

When you are completely cleaned and feeling that your body is refreshed -- you have been under a shower of energy, and your whole body is feeling one, undivided; and the substantialness of body is lost, you feel it more like an energy, a movement, a process, not material -- now you are ready. Then kneel down on the earth.

Kneeling down is beautiful; just like Sufis kneel down, or Mohammedans do their prayer in the mosque, kneel down like them because that is the best posture for latihan. Then raise both your hands towards the sky with closed eyes, and feel yourself to be like a hollow vessel, hollow bamboo; inside, hollow, just like an earthen pot. Your head is the mouth of the pot, and the energy is falling tremendously on your head as if you are standing under a waterfall. And you will be actually standing -- after the latihan you will feel it; it is like a waterfall, not like a shower. When you are ready it falls in greater strength, strong, and your body will start trembling, shaking, like a leaf in a strong wind; or, if you have stood under a waterfall sometime, then you will know. If you have never stood under one, go to a waterfall and stand under it and feel how it feels. That same feeling will come to you after latihan. Feel yourself hollow inside, nothing inside, just emptiness -- and the energy is filling you, filling you completely.

Allow it to fall into you as deeply as possible, so it can reach to your farthest corner of your body and mind and soul. And when you feel it -- you are so much filled, and the whole body is shaking -- kneel down, put your head down on the earth, and pour the energy into the earth. When you feel the energy is overflowing, pour down into the earth. Take from the sky, give it back to the earth, and you be just a hollow bamboo in between.

This has to be done seven times. Take from the sky and pour down into the earth and kiss the earth, and pour down -- be empty completely. Pour down as completely as you did for filling, be completely empty. Then raise your hands again, fill again, pour down again. Seven times it has to be done, because each time it penetrates one chakra of the body, one center of the body; each time it goes deeper in you. And if you do less than seven times, then you will feel restless after it because the energy will be hanging somewhere in between.

No, it has to penetrate all the seven chakras of your body so that you become completely hollow, a passage. The energy falls from the sky and goes into the earth, you are earthed; you simply pass the energy to the earth, just like electricity. For electricity we have to put an earth wire. The energy comes from the sky and goes into the earth, you become earthed -- just a vessel, a hollow bamboo passing the energy. Seven times -- more you can do, but not less. And this will be a complete Mahamudra.

If you do it every day, soon, within three months somewhere, one day you will feel you are not there. Just the energy is pulsating with the universe -- nobody is there, the ego is completely lost, the doer is not. The universe is there, and you are there, the wave pulsating with the ocean -- that is Mahamudra. That is the final orgasm, the most blissful state of consciousness that is possible.

This is just like two lovers making love, but millionfold, and the same phenomenon multiplied by millions -- because now you are making love with the whole universe. That's why tantra is known as the yoga of sex; tantra is known as the path of love. In Mahamudra all one's sins are burned: in Mahamudra one is released from the prison of this world. This is the dharma's supreme torch. Those who disbelieve it are fools, who ever wallow in misery and sorrow.

Source - Osho Book "Tantra : The Supreme Understanding"

heartbeatsalute

29-04-2012, 02:29 AM

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Question - I am addicted to telling lies. Why do I do it?

Osho - Vimal, it may be just to feel superior! People start telling lies because that gives them a speciality: they can pretend that they know things which nobody else knows. Truth is universal, the lie is private. It is your own creation, nobody else knows about it; you become very special, the knower. If you say the truth you will not be special.

I have heard that in a village there was a wise man. Once it happened that from the palace of the king some very precious diamonds were stolen and the king's people were searching for the stolen treasure. The king had loved those stones so much that at any cost they had to be brought back, but no clue was available.

Then somebody suggested, "We have an old wise man in the town; maybe he can be of some support, some help, some insight he can give. Whenever we are in trouble -- we are poor people, we cannot go to very learned scholars, we cannot go to the experts -- we always go to our old wise man. It has never been a disappointment; he always finds some beautiful advice for us."

So the authorities went to the wise man. The wise man closed his eyes, meditated a little, and then he said, "Yes, I know who has done it. But before I can tell you, a few promises from you. First, nobody should ever know that I have told you who has stolen the diamonds."

The promise was of course given. Then the wise man said, "You come with me. We will have to go very far away from people, deep in the forest, so nobody can hear something or even guess. And just the chief of you has to come with me." He took the chief, and the chief was very excited: he was just on the verge of discovering the treasure and he was hoping to be rewarded by the king immensely. It was a long walk into the forest. Again and again he said, "Now there is nobody," but the old man said, "Just a little more."

Finally the chief was tired and he said, "Why do you go on making me walk more and more? I am tired, utterly tired. If you know, please say. If you don't know, say it!"
The wise man said, "I know it. Come close to me. I will whisper in your ears, so nobody hears."
The chief said, "You seem to be almost mad. There is nobody here, we have left people miles away."
But the wise man said, "Just in case." And he whispered in the ears of the chief, "It is absolutely certain some thief has done it."

Now, if you say such universal truths you will not be very special. People love gossiping, people love telling lies, inventing lies. By inventing lies they have some special knowledge that nobody else in the world has; it is their own invention, so nobody knows about it. They can decorate it in such a way, they can rationalize, they can create many many strategies to protect it. And it always brings joy to people when they can befool others; then they know they are wiser than others.

This is an ego trip. The ego is the greatest lie in the world, and the ego always feels good whenever it can feel special. And it is not a question whether you are telling a lie or not; the whole question is whether the other is believing it or not. If the other is believing, at least for the moment it looks like the truth. And when you create many believers in you, it gives you power.

Truth needs no believers. Let me remind you: truth needs no believers. The sun rises in the morning -- you don't believe in it, do you? Nobody asks anybody, "Do you believe in the sun, sir? Do you believe in the moon?" If somebody comes and asks, "Do you believe in the sun, do you believe in the moon, do you believe in the trees?" you will think him mad. What is he asking these things for? They are, so there is no question of believing in them.

People believe in lies; truth needs no believers. And when you invent lies you become a great leader. That's how on the earth three hundred religions exist. Truth is one -- and three hundred religions! People have shown great inventiveness. When lies are such that nobody can detect them and there is no way to prove for or against, you are protected. So many people go on talking spiritual lies; that is safer.

Vimal, if you really want to enjoy telling lies, tell spiritual lies -- that the earth is hollow, that inside the earth there is the real civilization, that ufo's come from the hollow earth. Tell lies, supernatural, spiritual -- that God has not three faces but four. Nobody can prove or disprove how many faces God has; all that will be decisive is with what confidence you can lie. Your confidence will be catching people, it will become contagious. You can look, down the ages it has been happening.

Adolf Hitler has written in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, that a lie repeated again and again becomes a truth. And he knows -- in fact nobody else knows it so well as he knows; it is his own experience. His whole life he lived on lies, lies so blatant that on the surface of it nobody would have thought that anybody would believe in them.

For example, "The whole world is deteriorating, the whole world is going down to hell because of the Jews." How do the Jews come in? When for the first time he started talking about the Jews, even his friends laughed, even his friends told him, "This is stupid." He said "You simply wait. Go on repeating it, and not only non-Jews are going to believe it, even Jews will believe it. You just go on repeating it."

Beliefs are created by constant repetition. And he made the whole German race believe -- one of the most intelligent races on the earth, and it became victim to this stupid man. But he had a few qualities. For example, he was capable of repeating something continuously for years with confidence, from the housetops, with absolute certainty, with no hesitation. It was contagious.

People don't believe in what you say, people believe in the way you say it. And once you have learned the art of telling lies it becomes an addiction, because people start believing in you, you start becoming powerful. And then, if you can manage a few more things, your power will be immense.

For example, if you can manage a certain character, that gives you credibility. If your character is such that people can believe in you more easily, that will help you. The people who live on lies always create a character around themselves; if not a character, then at least an appearance of it.

Hitler was a MAHATMA. He was not a drinker, he would not touch any intoxicant. How can you not believe in such a person? He would eat only vegetarian food, he would not touch nonvegetarian food. How can you not believe in such a person? He would not drink even tea or coffee, he would not smoke. How can you not believe in such a person? He was a greater mahatma than Morarji Desai, because he would not even drink his own urine. How can you not believe in such a person? You have to believe! He has all the credibility.

He would get up early in the morning, as has been taught down the ages; he would go early to bed. He remained a bachelor almost to the end -- I say almost, because only three hours before he died, committed suicide, he got married. I think that is the only thing that he ever did which can be called wise -- just three hours before! He must have thought, "Now what can marriage do to me? I am going to die anyway."

Just three hours before... in the middle of the night, when he decided to commit suicide, he called the priest. The priest was awakened, was brought to his underground cell. Just three, four friends were present, the marriage ceremony was done quick and fast, and the only thing that they did after the marriage ceremony was commit suicide -- that was their honeymoon. He had remained a bachelor his whole life.

These things give credibility. If you really want to be a liar, if you really want to go on lying, then you have to create proofs that you are a man of character, how can you lie? People will believe you. That's why your saints, who live on so-called spiritual lies, depend on character.

A man who lives on truth need not depend on anything else; truth is enough. But truth does not create belief in people -- in fact, truth offends people. People love lies and are always offended by the truth. Vimal, that is the cause, not only of your addiction -- millions are addicted to lies, for the simple reason that people are never offended by lies. In fact they want to hear more and more. They say, "What is new?

Truth is never new. If you are thinking about truth, then there is nothing new under the sun. When you say, "What is new? What is the news?" you are inquiring, "Give me a few more lies, a few more gossips, a few more rumors." And you are ready to believe. In fact the greater the lie is, the greater is the possibility of its belief, because if there is only a small lie it can be detected by people; they have that much intelligence. But if the lie is very big, bigger than their intelligence, they will never be able to detect it. That's why great lies live for centuries.

Now, hell is a lie; there is no hell. And heaven is a lie; there is no heaven. But they have lived for centuries and centuries, and I don't think they are going to disappear. They will live. God as a person is a lie. There is godliness, but there is no God. Whenever I use the word god I simply mean godliness, remember it. Translate it always as godliness. There is a quality of godliness in existence, but there is no God. But people want a God, not godliness; they are not interested in godliness.

That's why people like Buddha could not influence much. Buddha and his whole religion disappeared from this country. One of the most fundamental reasons was this: that he emphasized godliness and not God. If godliness is there, then it is a difficult task. You have to grow into godliness; it is not something readymade there that you can possess. It is not something that you can pray to, it is not something that you can desire anything from. It is not already there, it has to be created in the innermost core of your being. It is like love -- it has to bloom in you, you have to release the fragrance of it. You have to become godly, only then there is God; otherwise there is no God.

But this is too much. Nobody wants to pay so great a price. Why not believe in a simple lie, that there is a God -- a very very old ancient man with a white beard, sitting on a golden throne, ready to fulfill any of your demands if you truly ask? And that is the trick. If your prayer is fulfilled, the priest can say, "You really asked"; if it is not fulfilled, "There was no trust in your prayer."
In fact there is never trust in your prayer, because when there is trust there is no need to pray. All prayers arise out of doubt. But sometimes -- it is just a coincidence -- some prayers happen to be fulfilled. It is just a happening, it is just a chance; there is nobody to fulfill them. But when they are fulfilled, the priest can exploit the situation. He can say, "Look -- you prayed deeply, trustfully, your prayer is fulfilled."

But this happens only once in a while. Ninety-nine times in a hundred your prayer is not fulfilled. But you know yourself that there was not trust; doubt was there. Even when you were praying, there was doubt whether there is a God, whether he will hear, whether he will listen, whether he will oblige -- all kinds of doubts. In spite of all these doubts you say, "Why not try? What you are going to lose? Give it a try. Maybe, perhaps...." You know it. So when it is not fulfilled, the priest can always say to you, "Your trust was not total."

God is a lie as a person. God is a quality, not a personality. You cannot pray to God. You can be in prayer, but when the prayer is really there it is only a quality of love, nothing else. No words to express it, nobody to address it, it is simply a song, a wordless song in the heart, just a stirring of the deepest in you.

People love lies. Truth is arduous. And people also love lies because they make them feel good. You must lie about somebody else: you meet a and you lie about b and you make a feel good; then you meet b and you lie about a and you make b feel good. When you lie about others to people you give them the idea that they are better than others. You can play this game, and if you play it cleverly, cunningly, you can exploit very much.

Mulla Nasruddin and his friend Rahimtullah are standing on a street corner insulting one another. The one calls the other stupid, a cheat, a thief. The other says, "You are a coward, a miser, a hypocrite." Finally they begin insulting each other's families.
Mulla Nasruddin looks Rahimtullah straight in the eye and says, "Your sister is a stinking old whore; for twenty-five paisa she will let a one-eyed leper crawl over her."

Rahimtullah stands there, speechless. A bystander is amazed. He goes over to him and says, "For God's sake, man, how can you just stand there and let the Mulla insult your sister like that?"

Rahimtullah says, "I don't have a sister, I never had a sister, and now that my parents are both dead I never will have a sister."
So the bystander turns to Mulla Nasruddin and says, "Mulla, there is no point your insulting him like that, he does not have a sister."
"Sure," says the Mulla. "Of course not. I know it and he knows it, and now even you know it. But I ask you, how many of the people who had their windows open and were listening to our every word -- how many of them also know it?"

People are living in enormous ignorance; they have not lit the candle of light that is there in their hearts. Their interiority is full of darkness. They don't know even themselves -- what else can they know? Hence you can lie easily and they will believe it, and you can exploit their belief. The politicians have been doing it, the priests have been doing it, and it has been done down the ages. Exploit people. This is one of the most cunning businesses ever invented by man.

In the name of religion, only lies and lies are being propagated. Hence whenever a man of truth arrives, there is great confusion. Jesus creates confusion because he starts telling the truth as it is, and people have been accustomed to lies. They think their lies are the truth, and now here comes this man and he starts saying something else, something totally different. Either they have to believe in this man... then they have to drop their whole tradition, which is a long long investment, and only a very few courageous ones can do it. The easier way is to destroy this man, to make this man silent, so they can go on dreaming and believing in their lies.

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Osho on Lies

You ask me, "I am addicted to telling lies. Why do I do it?"
You must have known the ancient art of the politicians and the priests; maybe you unconsciously have stumbled upon it. And now those lies are paying off for you. I know one man, a very good man in a way. He has never worked, he has never done anything, but he is very good at a few things; at playing cards, at playing chess, at gossiping and things like that he is perfect. Very cultured, very educated -- he is a Ph.D.; we had studied together. He has lived his whole life on lies and cheating people.
When I was a professor in the university, sometimes he would come and stay with me for a few days.

Once I asked him, "When are you going to stop all this business of telling lies?"
He said, "Never!"
I said, "But sooner or later you will be caught."
He said, "Never... because there are so many millions and millions of people in this world, and I cheat a person only one time; then I forget about him, then I find another victim." And he said, "I have only a small life, maybe seventy, at the most eighty years, and the world is big and victims are so many -- I can go on cheating."

He was very clever in making friends, he was very clever at creating a feeling in you that he is a man who can be trusted. Once the trust has arisen, he would immediately deceive you. But that much is certain: he never deceived a person twice. There is no need either, there are so many people.

You must have found some nourishment in telling lies to people. Maybe they pay you more attention, maybe they make you feel that you know more than they know. There are people who go on reading each other's hands. Nobody knows anything. There are people -- tarot card readers, experts in I Ching reading.... These are all basically games. You can invent your own game. And if you start playing these games you will become more and more efficient. And these things pay -- although what you are gaining is mundane, spurious, and what you are losing is very essential. You are losing your very soul, you are committing suicide, but it feels as if it is paying.

Stop enjoying it, unlearn the whole art! Of course you will feel many difficulties arising, because you must have become dependent on the art of telling lies. Take the risk, let it be hard. For a few days, it will be hard. Stop immediately! Listen to Atisha's advice: three difficulties.

First: if you become aware when you are lying to somebody, immediately, in the middle of it, ask to be forgiven. Say immediately, "This was a lie, and I was again getting into my old trick. Forgive me, please." It will be hard, but there is no other way. When a habit has become very deep-rooted, it has to be hammered.

Second: become aware when you are just preparing to tell a lie. Just as it is on the lips, just on the tongue... stop it then and there, abort it then and there.

And third: become aware when a lie starts arising in your feelings, in the heart.

If you can do these three awarenesses, lying will disappear. And the moment lying disappears, truth arrives. And truth is the only thing worth seeking and searching, because truth liberates.

MY FRIEND, WHO HAS A PH.D. IN COMPUTING, AND WHOSE THESIS WAS ON "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE", SAYS THAT MAN IS A BIOCHEMICAL COMPUTER AND NOTHING MORE. THE BUDDHA HAS SAID THAT ALL THINGS ARE COMPOSITE AND THERE IS NO SELF, NO SOUL, NO SPIRIT, NO "I", WHICH SEEMS TO AGREE WITH MY FRIEND'S VIEWPOINT. COULD YOU PLEASE HELP ME, BECAUSE I FEEL THAT THERE IS SOMETHING MISSING FROM THESE VIEWS BUT I CAN'T SEE IT MYSELF.

Prem Hamid,

MAN certainly is a biocomputer, but something more too. About ninety-nine point nine percent of people it can be said that they are only biocomputers and nothing more. Ordinarily one is only the body and the mind, and both are composites. Unless one moves into meditation one cannot find that which is something more, something transcendental to body and mind.

The psychologists, particularly the behaviorists, have been studying man for half a century, but they study the ordinary man, and of course their thesis is proved by all their studies. The ordinary man, the unconscious man, has nothing more in him than the bodymind composite. The body is the outer side of the mind and the mind the inner side of the body. Both are born and both will die one day.

But there is something more. That something more makes a man awakened, enlightened, a Buddha, a Christ. But a Buddha or a Christ is not available to be studied by Pavlov, Skinner, Delgado and others. Their study is about the unconscious man, and of course when you study the unconscious man you will not find anything transcendental in him. The transcendental exists in the unconscious man only as a potential, as a possibility; it is not yet realized, it is not yet a reality. Hence you cannot study it.

You can study it only in a Buddha, but even then studying is obviously very difficult, just very close to the impossible, because what you will study in a Buddha will again be his behavior. And if you are determined that there is nothing more, if you have already concluded, then even in his behavior you will see only mechanical reactions, you will not see his spontaneity. To see that spontaneity you have also to become a participant in meditation.

Psychology can become only a real psychology when meditation becomes its foundation. The word "psychology" means the science of the soul. Modern psychology is not yet a science of the soul.

Buddha certainly has denied the self, the ego, the "I", but he has not denied the soul and the self and the soul are not synonymous. He denies the self because the self exists only in the unconscious man. The unconscious man needs a certain idea of "I", otherwise he will be without a center. He does not know his real center. He has to invent a false center so that he can at least function in the world, otherwise his functioning will become impossible. He needs a certain idea of "I".

You must have heard about Descartes' famous statement: "COGITO ERGO SUM -- I think, therefore I am."

A professor, teaching the philosophy of Descartes, was asked by a student, "Sir, I think, but how do I know that I am?"

The professor pretended to peer around the classroom. "Who is asking the question?" he said.

"I am," replied the student.

One needs a certain idea of "I", otherwise functioning will become impossible. So because we don't know the real "I" we substitute it by a false "I" -- something invented, composite.

Buddha denies the self because to him "self" simply is another name for the ego, with a little color of spirituality, otherwise there is no difference. His word is anatta. Atta means "self', anatta means "no-self". But he is not denying the soul. In fact he says when the self is completely dropped, then only you will come to know the soul. But he does not say anything about it because nothing can be said about it.

His approach is via negativa. He says: You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not the self He goes on denying, eliminating. He eliminates everything that you can conceive of, and then he does not say anything what is left. That which is left is your reality: that utterly pure sky without clouds, no thought, no identity, no emotion, no desire, no ego -- nothing is left. All clouds have disappeared... just the pure sky.

It is inexpressible, unnameable, indefinable. That's why he keeps absolutely silent about it. He knows it that if anything is said about it you will immediately jump back to your old idea of the self If he says, "There is a soul in you," what you are going to understand? You will think that, "He calls it soul and we call it self -- it is the same. The supreme self maybe, the spiritual self; it is not ordinary ego." But spiritual or unspiritual, the idea of my being a separate entity is the point.

Buddha denies that you are a separate entity from the whole. You are one with the organic unity of existence, so there is no need to say anything about your separateness. Even the word "soul" will give you a certain idea Of separateness; you are bound to understand it in your own unconscious way.

Can a biochemical computer say that? Can a biochemical computer deny the self, the soul? No biocomputer or any other kind of computer has any idea of self or no-self. Your friend is doing it -- certainly HE is not a biochemical computer. No biochemical computer can write a thesis on artificial intelligence! Do you think artificial intelligence can write a thesis about artificial intelligence? Something more is needed.

And he is absolutely wrong in thinking that Buddha says also the same thing:

... THAT ALL THINGS ARE COMPOSITE AND THERE IS NO SELF NO SOUL, NO SPIRIT, NO "I".

He is wrong to think that Buddha agrees with his viewpoint -- not at all. Buddha's experience is of meditation. Without meditation nobody can have any idea what Buddha is saying about. Your friend's observation is from the standpoint of a scientific onlooker. It is not his experience, it is his observation. He is studying biochemical computers, artificial intelligence, from the outside. Who is studying outside?

Can you conceive two computers studying each other? The computer can have only that which has been fed into it; it cannot have more than that. The information has to be given to it, then it keeps it in its memory -- it is a memory system. It can do miracles as far as mathematics is concerned. A computer can be far more efficient than any Albert Einstein as far as mathematics is concerned, but a computer cannot be a meditator. Can you imagine a computer just sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself...?

There are many qualities which are impossible for the computer. A computer cannot be in love. You can keep many computers together -- they will not fall in love! A computer cannot have any experience of beauty. A computer cannot know any bliss. A computer cannot have any awareness. A computer is incapable of feeling silence. And these are the qualities which prove that man has something more than artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence can do scientific work, mathematical work, calculation -- great calculation and very quick and very efficiently, because it is a machine. But a machine cannot be aware of what it is doing. A computer cannot feel boredom, a computer cannot feel meaninglessness, a computer cannot experience anguish. A computer cannot start an enquiry about truth, it cannot renounce the world and become a sannyasin, it cannot go to the mountains or to the monasteries. It cannot conceive of anything beyond the mechanical -- and all that is significant is beyond the mechanical.

A policeman starts chasing a car after noticing that the driver is a computer, a robot -- wearing a hat, smoking a cigar and driving with one hand hanging out of the window.

He finally succeeds in stopping the car. He approaches it and sees to his surprise that there is a man sitting next to the computer.

"Are you mad?" exclaims the officer, "letting your computer drive?"

"Excuse me, officer," replies the man, "I asked him for a lift!"

Yes, in stories it is possible, but not in reality.

Mr. Polanski enjoys playing with cuckoo clocks. One rainy Sunday morning he takes his cuckoo clock apart and puts it back together again.

At twelve o'clock the family gathers, waiting for the pretty little bird to sing its song... nothing happens. They wait till one o'clock -- no cuckoo. At two o'clock they are still waiting for the bird to appear. Finally, at three o'clock, the little door opens and the cuckoo comes out.

"Dammit!" it squeaks. "Do any of you guys know the time?"

I AM THAT, OSHO

heartbeatsalute

29-04-2012, 05:40 AM

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Vigyan Bhairav Tantra - Meditation Technique 28

SUPPOSE YOU ARE GRADUALLY BEING DEPRIVED OF STRENGTH OR OF KNOWLEDGE. AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND.

Osho - You can do it in an actual situation or you can imagine a situation. For example: lie down, relax, and feel as if your body is going to die. Close your eyes; start feeling that you are dying. Soon you will feel that your body is becoming heavy. Imagine: "I am dying, I am dying, I am dying." If the feeling is authentic, the body will start becoming heavy; you will feel as if your body has become like lead. You want to move your hand, but you cannot move; it has become so heavy and dead. Go on feeling that you are dying, dying, dying, dying, dying, and when you feel that now the moment has come -- just a jump and you will be dead -- then suddenly forget your body and transcend.

SUPPOSE YOU ARE GRADUALLY BEING DEPRIVED OF STRENGTH OR OF KNOWLEDGE. AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND.

When you feel that the body is dead, what is meant now by transcending? Look at the body. Up to now you were feeling that you are dying; now the body has become a dead weight. Look at the body. Forget that you are dying and now be the observer. The body is lying dead and you are looking at it. There will be a transcendence. You will be out of your mind, because a dead body needs no mind. A dead body relaxes so much that the very process of the mind stops. You are there and the body is there, but the mind is absent. Remember, mind is needed for life, not for death.

If suddenly you come to know that within an hour you will die, what will you do in that hour? One hour left, and it is certain that you are going to die after one hour - exactly after one hour. What will you do? Your thinking will drop completely because the whole of thinking is concerned with either the past or the future.

You were planning to purchase a house or to purchase a car, or you were planning to marry someone or divorce someone. You were thinking many things, and they were constantly on your mind. Now, with only one hour more, there is no meaning in marriage and no meaning in divorce. Now you can leave all the planning to others, who are going to live. With death planning ceases, with death worrying ceases, because every worry is life-oriented.

You have to live tomorrow; that is why there is worry. So all those who have been teaching meditation to the world have always been saying: do not think of tomorrow. Jesus says to his disciples, "Do not think of the tomorrow," because if you think of the tomorrow you cannot go into meditation. Then you move into worries. But we are so fond of worries that not only do we think of the tomorrow, we think of the other life. So we plan not only for this life, we plan for the other life, beyond death, also.

One day I was passing through a street and someone gave me a pamphlet. A very beautiful house was painted on the cover and a very beautiful garden. It was lovely - divinely lovely. And in very big capital letters was the question: "Do you want such a beautiful house and such a beautiful garden? And without any price, without any cost -- for free?" I turned it over. The house was not of this earth. It was a Christian pamphlet, and it read, "If you want such a beautiful house and such a beautiful garden, believe in Jesus. Those who believe in him will get such houses free of cost in the kingdom of God."

The mind goes on not only thinking of tomorrow, but thinking of beyond death, arranging and making reservations for the afterlife. Such a mind cannot be a religious mind. A religious mind cannot think of tomorrow. So those who think of the afterlife are constantly worried about whether God will behave rightly with them or not.

Churchill was dying and someone asked him, "Are you ready to meet the Father there in heaven?" Churchill said, "That is not my worry. I am constantly worried whether the divine Father is ready to meet me."

But either way one goes on worrying about the future. Buddha said, "There is no heaven and no afterlife." And he said, "There is no soul, and your death will be total and complete; nothing will survive." People thought he was an atheist. He was not, he was just trying to create a situation in which you can forget the tomorrow and can remain in this very moment, here and now. Then meditation follows very easily.

So if you are thinking of death -- not the death which will come, or is to come later -- fall down on the ground and lie dead. Relax and feel, "I am dying, I am dying, I am dying." And not only think it, feel it in every limb of the body, in every fib of the body. Let death creep in. It is one of the most beautiful meditations. When you feel that the body is a dead weight and you cannot move your hand, you cannot move your head and everything has become dead, suddenly look at your own body.

Mind will not be there. You can look! You will be there; consciousness will be there. Look at your body -- it will not look like yours, it will be just a body. The gap between you and the body will be clear - crystal clear. There will be no bridge. The body is lying dead and you are there standing as a witness, not in it -- NOT in it!

Remember, the feeling that you are in the body is because of the mind. This feeling that you are in the body is because of the MIND! If the mind is not there, if it is absent, you will not say you are in the body or out of the body. You will simply be there, no in or out. "In" and "out" are both relative terms associated with the mind. Simply, you will be there witnessing. This is transcendence. You can do it in many ways.

Sometimes it is possible in actual situations... You are ill and you are feeling that there is no hope, you are going to die. This is a very useful situation. Use it for meditation. You can try it in other ways also. Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength. Lie down and feel as if the whole existence is sucking your strength out. You are being sucked from everywhere -- your strength is being sucked. Soon you will be impotent, completely devoid of strength. Your energy is flowing out, being taken out. Soon nothing will be left inside. That is how life is: you are being sucked out, everything that is around you is sucking you out. One day you will be just a dead cell; everything will have been sucked out. The life will have flown out of you, and only the dead body will remain there.

Even this very moment you can do it. Imagine this: lie down and feel that the energy is being sucked out. Within a few days you will have the knack of how energy goes out. And when you feel that everything has moved out, nothing is now left within you, TRANSCEND: AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND. When the last quantum of energy is leaving you, transcend. Be an onlooker; just become a witness. Then this universe and this body, both, are not you. You are looking at the phenomenon.

This transcendence will bring you out of the mind. This is the key. And you can do it in many ways, whatsoever is your liking. For example, we were talking about a run around. Exhaust yourself; go on running and running and running. Do not stop by yourself, let the body fall. When every fib is exhausted, you will fall down. When you are falling down, become aware. Just look and see that the body is falling down. Sometimes a very miraculous happening happens. You remain standing and the body has fallen down, and you can look at it. You can look, as only the body has fallen down and you are still standing. Do not fall with the body. Roam around, run, dance, exhaust the body -- but remember, you are not to lie down. Then the inner consciousness also moves with the body and lies down.

You are not to lie down, you just go on doing it until the body falls by itself. Then it falls like a dead weight. Immediately, you feel the body is falling and you cannot do anything. Open your eyes, be alert, do not miss the point. Be alert and see what is happening. You may be still standing, and the body has fallen down. And once you know it, you can never forget that you are different from the body.

This "standing out" is the real meaning of the English word ecstasy. Ecstasy means to stand out. And once you can feel you are out of the body, there is no mind in that moment, because mind is the bridge that gives you the feeling that you are in the body. If you are out of the body for a single moment, there will be no mind in that moment. This is transcendence. Then you can move in the body, then you can move in the mind, but now you cannot forget the experience . That experience has become part and parcel of your being; it will be there always. Go on doing it every day, and many things happen through such a simple process.

The West is always worried about how to tackle mind, and it tries to find many ways. But still, nothing works or seems to work. Everything becomes a fashion and then dies. Now psychoanalysis is a dead movement. New movements are there - encounter groups, group psychology, action psychology and many other things - but just like a fashion they come and go. Why? Because within mind, at the most you can only make arrangements. They will be disturbed again and again. Making arrangements with the mind is making a house on sand, or making a house of playing cards. It is always wavering, and the fear is always there that now it is going. At any moment it may not be there.

Going beyond the mind is the only way to be inwardly happy and healthy, to be whole. Then you can move in the mind and use the mind, but the mind becomes the instrument and you are not identified with it. So two things. Either you are identified with the mind -- this is illness for tantra -- or you are not identified with the mind. Then you use it as an instrument, and then you are healthy and whole.

The fifth technique is very simple in one sense and the most difficult in another, and it is only of two words.

Osho - Beyond psychotherapy is your real being. Psychotherapy is confined to the mind -- and you are not the mind. The West has always divided man into body and mind. The East, which knows more, knows that there is something beyond this duality of body-mind.

Psychotherapy can help a little bit for those who are mentally sick, but not much, because psychotherapists are the most mentally sick people on the earth. More psychotherapists commit suicide than any other profession. More psychotherapists go mad than any other profession. More psychotherapists are sexually perverted than any other profession. And these people are trying to help mentally sick people! They have the expertise, they can help you a little bit; they can bring you back to your normal state of insanity. But that which is beyond psychotherapy brings you to real health, wholeness.

Man consists of three layers: the body -- the most visible; the being -- the most invisible; and the mind -- in between. The mind is a good mechanism, but not a good master. It can serve you if you are the master and the mind is the servant. But if the servant becomes the master and starts ruling over you, that is the state of insanity. That's why I say the whole humanity is "normally insane."

Osho on Psychotherapy

What is mind? It is all borrowed, and borrowed from different sources -- from the parents, from the neighbors, from the teachers, from the priests, from the libraries. Its hunger is insatiable; it goes on swallowing all kinds of information. That information may be contradictory, that information may create tensions, may create a split -- or many splits.

For example, if you are born a Christian.... The BIBLE says the earth is flat. From your very childhood you have believed in the BIBLE because your parents believed in it. But in school you learn that the earth is not flat, it is a globe. Both these pieces of information are collected by the mind. Their conflict becomes your anxiety, and this anxiety takes thousands of shapes. And it is impossible for you to decide which way to go; you are pulled apart in all directions.

If you somehow can maintain your balance, this is normal insanity. Insanity is there, but it is just the same as everybody else's. Unless you come in close proximity to a saner person, you will not be able to think yourself insane.

The function of the psychotherapist is, whenever somebody goes beyond the boundary of the normal humanity, to bring him back. It is not an easy job. It takes years, and only the very rich can afford it. Then, too, success is not certain, because the person who is treating him is himself repressing his own insanity.

I have heard about one psychotherapist.... He was treating a patient who had this insane idea that thousands of flies, which nobody could see, were sitting all over his body -- on his face, on his hands -- and he was continuously brushing them off. Everybody said that there are no flies, but he said, "Should I believe my own eyes or your eyes? Should I believe my own hands which are feeling the flies, or your hands? I can see flies are not on you; they are simply attracted to me."

Finally, it became impossible for him to do anything. His family brought him to the psychotherapist. The psychotherapist tried, explained, analyzed his dreams. After two years they were sitting in the garden chitchatting -- they had become friendly in the two years -- and the man started brushing off flies. The psychotherapist stood up, and he said, "Not on me! I have tolerated it for two years, but there is a limit to everything."

In these two years the madman with the flies has convinced the psychoanalyst that flies exist, they are -- rather than the psychoanalyst convincing him that the flies are just his imagination. It is a dangerous game. That's why so many psychotherapists go mad; to be with mad people is not an easy job.

In one madhouse, the old doctor had retired and the new doctor had come in, and all the mad people were very happy. They rejoiced and danced. The doctor said, "Why are you so happy?"

They said, "Because you are just like us! That man, although he stayed with us for ten years, remained a foreigner. But you really understand." At that moment the doctor saw that he himself was dancing with them, rejoicing. Even the mad people recognized that he was also mad. They said, "This is the greatest thing that has happened in this madhouse. Now there is no problem -- we are all one."

This unity between the patient and the doctor.... The psychotherapist has to create some kind of bridge to communicate, but inside him is the same kind of mind which can go berserk any moment. And to convince a madman, a fanatic -- and all madmen are fanatic, and all fanatics are mad -- is very difficult.

One man, who thought he was dead, was brought to a psychoanalyst. That was too much. The whole society was puzzled as to how to convince him that he was not dead. His family, wife, children, parents, were all in deep sadness. But how to convince a man that he is not dead? The psychoanalyst thought of a method. He asked the madman, "Do you know that a dead man never bleeds?"
The madman said, "That's true, I know. How can a dead man bleed? Blood disappears as life disappears."

The psychoanalyst took him close to the mirror, pushed a needle into his hand, and blood came out. The psychotherapist asked him, "Now what do you say?"
He said, "This means the proverb is wrong -- dead men do bleed! This is a proof; nobody ever experimented before. Are you convinced, or not?"

Naturally, psychotherapists become more and more filled with these mad people's ideas; they become their nightmare, they follow them like a shadow. So it is understandable why they go mad more than any other profession. And why do they commit suicide? Perhaps the tension becomes so much that living becomes impossible. Why do they become perverted? -- because they are surrounded by perverted people. And your mind is continuously taking information from outside, accumulating it; it is a computer.

Psychotherapy has not done much good to humanity. It cannot. In the East, nothing like psychotherapy has happened. You will be surprised that in the East, for ten thousand years, no enlightened person has even paid any attention to the mind. If they have ever talked about the mind, they have talked in reference to meditation. And what they have talked about is how to make the mind silent, empty, a total nothingness, a no-mind.

The state of no-mind is unknown to the West, and it is only in the state of no-mind that one becomes aware of that which is beyond mind.... Because when all the chattering of the mind stops and there is no more noise, the still small voice of the being is heard. For the first time one becomes aware, "I am here. I was not there in that crowded place, I was always out of it."

And a single moment of knowing yourself to be above the mind has given you a master key. Now the mind can never become your master. And if the mind can never become your master it can never drive you mad. Now the mind cannot go on accumulating whatever it wants. Once the being asserts itself, the mind becomes very submissive -- immediately.

It is just like in a small school... children are chitchatting, making noise, running around in the class -- and the master appears. Immediately, every child is in his seat, with open book, trying to look very busy; and there is complete silence. The master has not done anything, he has not even uttered a single world, but his presence is enough. Exactly something like that happens. The presence of being -- and the mind stops all its nuisance. The thoughts disappear and the mind becomes just a pure space.

The being can see through the mind with great clarity, perception. Before the being's arrival it was always a question of either/or -- to do this or to do that, what is right, what is wrong -- and the mind was never able to decide. And, whatever it decided, it was always half-hearted; hence, repentance was always bound to happen. You were thinking to marry this woman or that woman... finally the mind has to decide. Wavering, it comes to a decision. By marrying one woman you come to know the woman in her totality, and a great repentance settles in: you have chosen the wrong woman.

Nobody in the whole world has chosen the right woman, neither has any woman chosen the right man. It is very strange.... How do you manage, out of millions of people, always to find the wrong woman, the wrong man?

The fault is not of the man, not of the woman. The mind has no clarity. It is clouded by so many thoughts; it is incapable of decision because it is incapable of clarity. Once mind is silent, once there is a state of no-mind, being is very sharp and clear. There is no question of either/or, there is no question of choosing; whatever the being does is choiceless. It simply does that which the clarity allows it to do. It is always right. Just as mind is always wrong, being is always right.

But the West has not recognized being. Hence, in the muddy waters of the mind, Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler and their progeny -- they are all just making the water more muddy. They have themselves not known that there is something in their innermost core which cannot go mad, which is sanity itself. Existence speaks through it -- it is the voice of life itself.

But the psychotherapists are afraid even to discover being. There were chances.... Jung traveled long in India, visiting the Taj Mahal, Khajuraho, Konarak, the caves of Ajanta and Ellora -- all beautiful places. And he was told by every person he came across, "Rather than wasting time in visiting these places, you should not miss meeting a man, Raman Maharshi, who lives in South India on the hill Arunachal -- it is not far away -- because he can give you a glimpse. Perhaps in his presence, just sitting by his side or talking to him, you may have some idea of why the East has never paid any attention to mind, and yet has produced the greatest enlightened people, the sanest people possible, with crystal-clear vision."

Raman Maharshi was one of those people, but Jung never went to him. He was afraid; the very idea that there is something beyond mind was very scary. That means the whole of psychoanalysis is meaningless, and he was not ready to take the risk of meeting such a man. He came back from India without visiting Raman.

Jung's fear is the fear of all psychoanalysts -- something beyond the mind makes their whole profession utterly meaningless. And if there is a direct method to reach the being by bypassing the mind, and if the moment you reach the being the mind itself cools down, there is no need of any psychoanalysis. There is no need to convince the insane person that he is wrong. There is no need to go into deep details about his dreams, diaries, and all kinds of nonsense.

Meditation is a direct route to being. It simply bypasses the mind. And once you are centered in your being, the mind, which was jumping up and down pretending to be your master, suddenly becomes submissive; it immediately falls silent, drops all its noise. And a man of being can use the mind just the way you can use any mechanism. But if the mechanism starts using you, that is an ugly state.

Man should remember that he is the master of his body and of his mind. Certainly the master must be beyond both. And I say it on my own authority: it is so. You can play with psychotherapy and other therapies -- they are just games. If you like those games, no harm. They are better than football, but they are no more than games. And they are not going to give you a new life, they are not going to give you an authentic intelligence, a clarity which can see into every problem without any question of either/or. The enlightened man is nothing but the man who functions from his being.

People tell me, "We have to decide what is right and what is wrong." Yes, you will have to decide if you live under the impact of the mind -- and none of your decisions is going to prove right. Whatever you choose you will suffer, and you will always look back: "Perhaps the other alternative was better?"

The enlightened man never chooses, he lives in a choiceless awareness. In the light of his awareness he knows what is right; it is not a question of decision. And the moment you know what is right, with your total being, you never repent. For three decades continuously I have never looked back. I have never for a single moment thought that perhaps if I had chosen something else, it would have been better. The question does not arise.

Hence, the enlightened man carries no burden of the past, and remains clear -- because the burden of the past is like dust gathering on your awareness, on the mirror of your being. When the mirror is clear it simply reflects what is the case.

So it is not a question of deciding what is right and wrong. That's why I have never talked to my people about morality, immorality, virtue, sin, good, bad; it is useless. I have insisted only on one point, that you become centered in your being. And then whatever you do is right, is virtue. Yes, there is your real being -- beyond psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is only children's play. And it is strange, still today the psychoanalyst is not willing even to consider the position of enlightenment. I can understand why he cannot even consider it: psychotherapy has become his bread and butter. It is one of the most highly paid professions.

The psychotherapist is the latest version of the priest. He is a parasite, he is sucking blood in the name of curing insane people. And I have never come across a single man who has been cured by psychoanalysis. Even the psychoanalyst is not cured. The founders of psychoanalysis were not the people who can be said to be whole and absolutely healthy in their consciousness.

Jung was very much afraid of death. Now, that is not a sign of a meditator. He was so afraid of death.... But it is a strange phenomenon: whatever you are afraid of, you are also in some way obsessed by. He was obsessed with the desire to see the mummies in Egypt. At least half a dozen times he booked his ticket to go to Egypt, and each time he would find some excuse to cancel it. The sixth time he gathered courage and reached the airport, but at the airport he lost his nerve again.

He turned back, and he wrote in his diary, "I cannot go to Egypt. I cannot see those dead bodies, hundreds of years old, because every dead body reminds me of my own death."

A man of meditation knows there is no death. And if this kind of fear exists in the founder of a school called analytical psychology, what can you expect from his disciples?
Jung himself was a disciple of Sigmund Freud. And the reason they had to part was a very funny one. Sigmund Freud was very much afraid of ghosts. Even the word "ghost" was enough to make him go into a fit, and he would start foaming at the mouth. So every disciple knew that the word "ghost" was never to be mentioned before him. And this is the founder of psychoanalysis! These people are sick themselves. Because Jung continued to use the word "ghost," and three times made Freud go into a fit, that was too much. The third time, when he came out of the fit, Freud told Jung, "You just get lost! I don't want to hear anything that makes me sick."

But what is the fear in ghosts? Why is he so afraid -- such trembling, such fear? And Freud was psychoanalyzing hundreds of people's dreams, but he never allowed any of his disciples to psychoanalyze his dreams. He himself was not psychoanalyzed. Strange... the founder should be available for his own method.

The reason is clear. Freud knew what his dreams were, and how he had been interpreting others' dreams -- making everything symbolic of sexuality. If somebody sees a rocket in the dream, that is a phallic symbol. Anything! He was very clever at making symbols, interpreting them as your repressed sex. And that was the fear: because these disciples have become experts, now they will interpret his dreams as repressed sexuality -- which he never wanted the world to know. But this is not the way of the seeker, the way of truth.

Psychotherapy's days are numbered. As meditation spreads, psychotherapy will start shrinking. If we can spread meditation around the earth, psychotherapy will simply disappear. There is no use for it, and it has not helped in any way. And you should not get into the mud of psychotherapy -- because to get into it is very easy but to get out of it is very difficult. You go on digging, and you go on finding more and more mud; there is no end to it. Mind has an infinite store of dreams, thoughts, desires, repressions, perversions.

There are people who have been psychoanalyzed for fifteen years continuously, but their psychoanalysis is not complete. There is not even a single man in the whole world whose psychoanalysis is complete. He is exactly at the same stage where he had started fifteen years ago -- although his bank balance has disappeared.

Meditation takes you to being.
It is a direct route to the beyond.
And once the master is there, mind immediately surrenders. In that surrender is health, because the master is in his place and the servant is in his place; the harmony is restored. And to be harmonious is all that health means.

Source - Osho Book "From Bondage to Freedom"

heartbeatsalute

29-04-2012, 07:12 AM

I have heard a very beautiful Jewish joke.
:D

There is a joke about a vampire who flew into Patrick O'Rourke's bedroom one night for the purpose of drinking his blood. Remembering the stories his mother told him, O'Rourke grabbed a crucifix and brandished it frantically in the vampire's face. The vampire paused for a moment, shook his head condolingly, clucked his tongue, and commented genially in the purest Yiddish: "Oy vey, bubbula! Have you ever got the wrong vampire!"

Now, if the vampire is Christian, good! You can show the cross. But if the vampire is Jewish, then what? Then: "Oy vey, bubbula! Have you ever got the wrong vampire!"

If you have a certain belief and life does not fit with it, what are you going to do? You can go on showing your crucifix -- but the vampire is a Jew. Then he is not going to take any note of your cross. Then what are you going to do?

Life is so vast and beliefs are so small; life is so infinite and beliefs are so tiny. Life never fits with any belief and if you try to force life into your beliefs you are trying to do the impossible. It has never happened; it cannot happen in the nature of things. Drop all beliefs and start learning how to experience.

Man is not a meaning but an opportunity. The meaning is possible, but is not given. The meaning can be created, but it is not already there. It is a task not a gift. Life is a gift, but life is open opportunity. Meaning is not a gift, meaning is a search. Those who seek will certainly find it. But those who simply wait will go on missing. The meaning, the Logos, has to be created by man. Man has to transform himself into that meaning. It cannot be something exterior to man; it can only be something interior.

Man’s inner being has to become illumined.

Before we enter into these sutras, a few things will be helpful to understand about man, because only then is the work possible.

The first thing to be understood is that man is a four-dimensional space-time continuum, just as the whole existence is. Three dimensions are of space, one dimension is of time. They are not separate: the dimension of time is but the fourth dimension of space. The three dimensions of space are static; the fourth dimension of time brings movement, makes life a process. Then existence is not a thing, but becomes an event.

And so is man. Man is the miniature universe. If you could understand man in his totality, you would have understood the whole existence. Man contains all – in seed. Man is a condensed universe. And these are the four dimensions of man.

The first dimension is what Patanjali calls sushupti, deep sleep, where not even a dream exists. One is utterly silent, not even a thought stirring, no wind blowing. All is absent That absence, in deep sleep, is the first dimension. It is from that that we start. And we have to understand our sleep, only then can we go through a transformation. Only then can we build our house on a rock, otherwise not. But very few people are there who understand their sleep.

You sleep every day, you live one-third of your life in deep sleep, but you don’t understand what it is. You go into it every night, and you also gain much out of it. But it is all unconscious: you don’t know exactly where it leads you. It leads you to the most simple dimension of your life – the first dimension. It is very simple because there is no duality. It is very simple because there is no complexity. It is very simple because there is only oneness. You have not yet arisen as an ego, you have not yet become divided – but the unity is unconscious.

If this unity becomes conscious you will have samadhi instead of sushupti. If this unity becomes conscious, illumined, then you will have attained God. That’s why Patanjali says: Deep sleep and samadhi, the ultimate state of consciousness, are very much alike, alike, because they are simple, alike, because in both there is no duality, alike, because in both the ego exists not.

In the first, the ego has not arisen yet; in the second, the ego has been dissolved – but there is a great difference too. The difference is that in samadhi you know what sleep is. Even while asleep your consciousness is there, your awareness is there. Your awareness goes on burning like a small light inside you.

A Zen Master was asked… It is a very famous saying in Zen:

Thus we are told that before we study Zen the mountains are mountains and the rivers are rivers. While we are studying Zen, however, the mountains are no longer mountains and the rivers are no longer rivers. But then when our study of Zen is completed, the mountains are once again mountains and the rivers are once again rivers.

‘What is meant by this?’ a disciple asked a great Master.

The Master explained this: ‘It simply means that the first and the last states are alike. Only just in the middle… the disturbance. First the mountains are mountains and again in the end the mountains are again mountains. But in the middle the mountains are no more mountains and rivers are no more rivers – everything is disturbed and confused and clouded. That clouding, that confusion, that chaos, exists only in the middle. In sushupti everything is as it should be; in samadhi, again everything is as it should be. Between the two is the problem, is the world, is the mind, is the ego, is the whole complex of misery, hell.

When the Master explained this, the disciple exclaimed ‘Well, if that’s true, then there is no difference between the ordinary man and the enlightened man.’

‘That’s true’ replied the Master. ‘There is no difference really. The only thing is, the enlightened man is six inches off the ground.’

But those six inches make all the difference. Why is the Master six inches off the ground? He lives in the world and is yet not in it – those are the six inches, the difference. He eats, and yet he is not the eater; he remains a witness – those six inches. He is ill, he knows the pain of illness but still he is not in pain; that difference – those six inches. He dies, he knows death is happening, and yet he is not dying: that difference – those six inches. He is asleep and yet he is not asleep, he is alert too.

The first state is of sushupti. We will call it ‘the first dimension’. It is dreamless undividedness, it is unconscious unity, it is ignorance, but very blissful. But the bliss too is unconscious. Only in the morning when you are awake again do you start feeling that there has been a good sleep in the night, that you have been in some faraway land, that you are feeling rejuvenated, that you are feeling very fresh, again young and alive; but only in the morning – not exactly at the time when you are in the sleep, only later on. Just some fragrance remains lingering in the memory. It reminds you that you have been to some inner depth, but where? What? – You cannot figure it out. You cannot give any account of it. Just a vague memory, a remembrance that somewhere you have been in a good space. There is no ego yet, so there is no misery possible, because misery is not possible without the ego.

This is the state where the rocks and the mountains and the rivers and the trees are existing. That’s why trees look so beautiful – an unconscious bliss surrounds them. That’s why mountains look so silent: they are in sushupti, they are in deep sleep, they are continuously in deep sleep. That’s why when you go to the Himalayas; an eternal silence is felt – virgin silence. Nobody has ever been able to disturb it. Just think of a mountain, and suddenly you start feeling silent. Think of trees and you feel life flowing in. The whole of nature exists in the first state, that’s why nature is so simple.

The second dimension is that of dream – what Patanjali calls swabha. The first disturbance in the sleep is dream. Now you are not one any more; the second dimension has arisen. Images have started floating in you: the beginning of the world. Now you are two: the dreamer and the dreamed. Now you are seeing the dream and you are the dream too. Now you are divided. That silence of the deep sleep is no more there, disturbance has entered because division has entered.

Division, duality, disturbance – that is the meaning of the dream. Although the duality is still unconscious, it is there; but not very consciously – not that you know about it. The turmoil is there, the world is born, but things are still undefined. They are just coming out of the smoke; things are taking shape. The form is not yet clear, the form has not yet become concrete, but because of the dualism – even though it is unconscious – misery has entered in. The nightmare is not very far away. The dream will turn into a nightmare.

This is where animals and birds exist. They also have a beauty, because they are very close to sushupti. Birds sitting on a tree are just dreams sitting in sleep. Birds making their nests on a tree are just dreams making their nests in sleep. There is a kind of affinity between the birds and the trees. If trees disappear, birds will disappear; and if birds disappear, trees will not be so beautiful any more. There is a deep relationship; it is one family. When you see parrots screeching and flying around a tree, it almost looks as if the leaves of the tree have got wings. They are not separate… very close. Birds and animals are more silent than man, happier than man. Birds don’t go mad. They don’t need psychiatrists; they don’t need any Freud, any Jung, any Adler. They are utterly healthy.

If you go into the forest and you see the animals, you will be surprised – they are all alike!; and all healthy. You will not find a single fat animal in the natural state. I am not talking about the zoo. In the zoo things go wrong, because the zoo is no more natural. Zoo animals start following man; they even start going mad and committing suicide. Zoo animals even turn into homosexuals. The state of the zoo is not natural, it is man-created. In nature they are very, very, silent, happy, healthy, but that health too is unconscious – they don’t know what is happening.

This is the second state: when you are in a dream. This is the second dimension. First: dreamless sleep, sushupti – simple one-dimensional; there is no ‘other’. Second: dream, swabha; there are two dimensions: the dreamer and the dreamed, the content and the consciousness – the division has arisen – the looker and the looked at, the observer and the observed. Duality has entered. This is the second dimension.

In the first dimension there is only the present tense. Sleep knows no past, no future. Of course because it knows no past, no future, it cannot know the present either, because the present exists only in the middle. You have to be aware of the past and the future, only then can you be aware of the present. Because there is no past and no future, sleep exists only in the present. It is pure present, but unconscious.

With the dream, the division enters. With the dream, the past becomes very, very important. Dream is past-oriented; all dreams come from the past. They are fragments of the past floating in the mind, dust from the past which has not settled yet.

It’s her old man I feel sorry for. He was in bed the other night fast asleep. Suddenly she noticed he had a smile on his face. She thought ‘Hello, he’s having one of those dreams again.’ So she put down her crisps and her bottle of stout and woke him up.

He said ‘Blimey, you would, wouldn’t you! I was having a lovely dream then! I was at this auction where they were selling mouths. They had small rosebud ones for a quid. Pert little pursed ones for two quid, and little smiling ones for a fiver.’

She said ‘Ooh! Did they have a mouth my size?’

‘Yes. They were holding the auction in it.’

Whatsoever you dream has something to say about your past. It may be that you see an auction – little smiling rosebud mouths are being sold – but the auction is being held in your wife’s mouth.

Maybe you have never said to your wife ‘Shut up, and keep your big mouth closed!’ Maybe you have not said it so clearly, but you have been thinking that so many times. It is lingering in the mind. It is there. Maybe you have never been so true in your waking state as you are when you are asleep. And you can be! You can afford to be true. All dreams float from the past. With the dream, past becomes existential. So the present is there, and the past.

With the third, the third dimension, waking state what Patanjali calls jagrut – multiplicity enters. The first is unity, the second is duality, the third is multiplicity. Great complexity arises. The whole world is born. In sleep you are deep inside you; in dream you are no more that deep inside you and yet you are not out either – just in the middle, on the threshold. With waking consciousness you are outside yourself, you have gone into the world.

You can understand the biblical story of Adam’s expulsion in these three dimensions. When Adam was there in the Garden of Eden and had not yet eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge it was deep sleep, unconscious – unconscious bliss it was. There was no disturbance, everything was simply beautiful. He had not known of any misery. Then he eats the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Knowledge arises, images start floating, dreams have started functioning. He is no more the same. He is still in the Garden of Eden but no more part of it – alien, stranger, an outsider. He has not yet been expelled, but in a subtle way he is no more centered there. He is uprooted. This is the state of the dream – the first taste of knowledge, because of the first taste of duality, the distinction of observer and the observed. And then he is being expelled from the Garden of Eden, thrown out – that is the third state, the waking state. Now he cannot even go back; there is no way back. He has forgotten that he has an inside too.

In deep sleep you are inside. In wakefulness you are outside. In dream you are just in the middle, hanging, not settled yet where to go, still indecisive, in doubt, uncertain. With the waking state, the ego enters in. In the dream state there are just rudimentary fragments of the ego arising, but they settle in the third. The ego becomes the most concrete, most solid, most decisive phenomenon. Then whatsoever you do, you do because of the ego.

The third state brings a little consciousness – just one per cent, not much of it, just a flickering consciousness, momentary consciousness. The first was absolutely unconscious, the second was unconsciousness disturbed. The third is the first glimpse of consciousness. And because of that – the momentary glimpse of consciousness – that one per cent of consciousness coming in creates the ego. Now the future also enters in.

First there is only the present unconscious; then there is the past unconscious, now there is future. Past, present, future, and the whole complexity of time revolves around you. This is the state where people are stuck, where you are stuck, where everybody is stuck. And if you go on building your house with these three dimensions, you will be building it on sand, because your whole effort will be unconscious.

To do something in unconsciousness is futile – it is shooting arrows in the dark not knowing where the target is. It is not going to bring much result. First, light is needed. The target has to be looked for, searched for. And enough light is needed so you can move towards the target consciously. That is possible only when the fourth dimension starts functioning. It rarely happens; but whenever it happens, then meaning is really born, Logos is born.

You will live a meaningless life if you live only with these three. You will live a meaningless life because you will not be able to create yourself. How can you create in such unawareness?

The fourth dimension is of awareness, witnessing – what Patanjali calls turiya. And in the Gospels Jesus goes on saying again and again to his disciples: Awake! Beware! Watch! All these words indicate turiya. And it is one of the misfortunes of history that Christianity has not been able to bring this message clearly to the world. It has failed utterly.

Rarely has a religion failed so utterly as Christianity. Jesus was not very fortunate, because the disciples that he found turned out to be very ordinary, and the religion became almost a political organization. The church became not a follower of Jesus but deep down really antagonistic to Jesus. The church has been doing things against Jesus in the name of Jesus.

Buddha was more fortunate. The followers never became a church, they never became so organized politically and they never became so worldly. They carried little bits of Buddha’s message down the ages.

This fourth dimension has to be understood as deeply as possible, because this is the goal. It is pure consciousness, simplicity again. The first was simple but unconscious; the fourth is simple but conscious. Unity again, bliss again – with only one difference: now everything is conscious, the inner light is burning bright. You are fully alert. It is not a dark night inside you but a full-moon night, moonlit. That is the meaning of enlightenment: the inner illumination.

Again there is only one time left – present, but now it is conscious present. Past is no more hanging around. A man who is aware cannot move in the past, because it is no more. A man who is aware cannot move in the future, because it is not yet. A man who is aware lives in the present, herenow. HERE is his only space and NOW is his only time. And because he is only herenow, time as such disappears. Eternity is born, timelessness is born. And when one is totally alert, ego cannot exist.

Ego is a shadow cast in unawareness. When all is light, the ego cannot exist. You will be able to see the falsity of it, the pseudo-ness of it. And in that very seeing is its disappearance.

These are the four dimensions of human consciousness. And people live only in the first three. The fourth carries the meaning; hence the people who live only in the three live a meaningless life. They know it. You know it! If you look into your life you will not find any meaning there, just a haphazard, accidental progression of things. One thing is followed by another, but with no particular consistency, with no particular relevance. One thing is followed by another just accidentally.

That’s what Jean-Paul Sartre means when he says ’Man is a useless passion’: man is accidental.

Yes, he is true if he is talking about the three dimensions: first, second and third; but he is not true about the fourth. And he cannot say anything about the fourth because he has not experienced anything of it. Only a Christ or a Buddha can say something about the fourth.

Christ-consciousness is of the fourth, so is Buddha-consciousness. To remain confined in the three is to be in the world. To enter into the fourth is to enter into nirvana, or call it the ’kingdom of God’. These are only different expressions for the same thing.

A few things more: The second dimension is a shadow of the first: sleep and dream. Dreams cannot exist without sleep, sleep is a must. Sleep can exist without dreams. So sleep is primary, dreams are secondary – just a shadow. And so is the case with the third and the fourth. The third is the shadow of the fourth, because the third can exist only if there is some consciousness. A little bit of consciousness has to be there, only then can the third exist. The third cannot exist without little bit of consciousness in it – a ray of light. It is not much of a light, but a ray of light is needed. The fourth can exist without the third, but the third cannot exist without the fourth. The fourth is awareness, absolute awareness; and the third is just a small ray of light in the dark night. But it exists because of that small ray of light. If that ray of light disappears, it will become the second; it will not be the third any more.

And your life looks like a shadow-life because you are living with the third. And the third is the shadow of the fourth. Only with the fourth do you come home. Only with the fourth are you grounded in existence.

The first is absolute darkness, the fourth is absolute light. Between these two are their two shadows. Those two shadows have become so important to us that we think that is our whole life. That’s why Hindus have been calling the world maya, illusion, because of these two dimensions which have become predominant – the second and the third. We have lost track of the first, and we have not yet searched for the fourth.

And one thing more: If you find the fourth you will find the first. Only one who has found the fourth will be able to know about the first, because once you have come to the fourth you can be asleep and remain alert. Krishna defines the yogi in the Gita as ‘one who is awake while asleep’. That’s his definition for the yogi. A strange definition: who is awake while asleep.

And just the reverse is the situation with you. You are asleep while awake. That is the definition of a non-yogi: asleep while awake. You look awake, and you are not.

It is just an idea, this awake state. Ninety-nine per cent consists of sleep – only one per cent of wakefulness. And that one per cent also goes on changing. Sometimes it is there and sometimes it is not there at all. It was there; somebody insults you – and it is not there. You have become angry, and you have lost even that small awareness. Somebody treads on your feet – and it is gone. It is very delicate. Anybody can take it and destroy it, and very easily. You were perfectly okay; a letter comes and something is written in the letter, and suddenly you are no more okay. All is disturbed. A single word can create such a disturbance! Your awareness is not very much.

And you are awake only in rare moments: in danger you are awake, because in danger you have to be awake. But when there is no danger, you start snoring. You can hear people snoring – walking down the road, they are snoring. And they are caged in their own unconsciousness.

A drunk bumped into a stop sign. Dazed and disoriented, he stepped back and then advanced in the same direction. Once more he hit the sign. He retreated a few steps, waited awhile, and then marched forward. Colliding with the post again, he embraced it in defeat and said ‘It is no use. I am fenced in. I am stopped in every direction.’

And he has not moved in any other direction. He has been moving again and again to the post. And being hit, naturally he concludes that he has been fenced in from every direction.

And that is the situation of the ordinary human consciousness. You go on moving in the same unconscious way, in the same unconscious direction. And again and again you are hit, and you think ‘Why is there so much misery? Why? Why did God create such a miserable world in the first place? Is God a kind of sadist? Does he want to torture people? Why has he created a life which is almost like a prison, and in which there is no freedom?’

Life is absolutely free. But to see that freedom, first you will have to free your consciousness.

Remember it as a criterion: the more conscious you are, the more free; the less conscious you are, the less free. The more conscious you are, the more blissful; the less conscious you are, the less blissful. It depends on how conscious you are. And there are people who will go on looking into the scriptures to find out ways to become more free, to become more blissful, to attain to truth. That is not going to help, because it is not a question of the scriptures. If you are unconscious and you go on reading the Bible and the Koran and the Vedas and the Gita, it is not going to help, because your unconsciousness cannot be changed by your studies. In fact the scripture cannot change your consciousness, but your unconsciousness will change the scripture – the meaning of the scriptures. You will find your own meanings there. You will interpret in such a way that the Bible, the Veda, the Koran, will start functioning as imprisonments. That’s how Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans are – all imprisoned.

I have heard…

After booking into a large hotel, a self-styled evangelist read in his room for an hour or two – and he was reading the Bible – then went down to the bar, and after a couple of drinks, he struck up a conversation with the red-headed barmaid. He stayed up until closing time and after the girl had cleared up, they both went up to the evangelist’s room.

When he started to interfere with her clothing, the barmaid seemed to have second thoughts. ‘Are you sure this is alright?’ she said ’after all you are a holy man.’

‘My dear’ he replied ‘it’s written in the Bible.’

She took him at his word, and they spent a very pleasant night together. The next morning, however, as the girl was preparing to leave, she said ‘You know, I don’t remember the part of the Bible you spoke about last night.’

The evangelist picked up the Gideon’s Bible from the bedside table, opened the cover, and showed her the flyleaf, on which was inscribed ‘The redheaded barmaid screws.’

Reading the whole Bible for one hour and this was his finding. Somebody had inscribed on the flyleaf…

If you read the Bible, you read it, remember. And the meaning that you give it will] be yours, the interpretation will be yours. It cannot help you, because it cannot even protect itself from you. How can it help you? The only way to have any change in life is to change consciousness. And to change consciousness you will not have to go into the Bible and the Vedas. You will have to go inwards, you will have to go into meditation. Scholarship won’t help.

A blind man was invited to a festivity and there he ate some delicious pudding. He was so enchanted by its taste that he asked someone sitting next him to tell what it looked like.

‘White’ the man said.

‘What is white?’ the blind man asked.

‘White? – like a duck’ came the answer.

‘How does a duck look?’, persisted the blind man.

Puzzled for a moment, the man finally said ‘Here, feel this’ and took the blind man’s hand in his hand and guided it along his other hand and arm, which he bent at the elbow and wrist to resemble the shape of a duck.

At this, the blind man exclaimed ‘Oh, the pudding is crooked!’

That’s what is going to happen. You cannot help the blind man to know what is white, or what is color, or what is light. All your help is going to give him something wrong. There is no way to help the blind man by definitions, by explanations, by theories, by dogmas, by scriptures. The only way to help him is to heal his eyes.

Buddha has said ‘I am a physician. I don’t give you definitions of light; I simply heal your eyes.’ And that’s what Jesus is, and all the miracles that are reported in the Bible are not miracles but parables – that a blind man came to him and he touched his eyes, and the blind man was healed and he could see immediately. If it is just about the physical eye, this is not much. Then Jesus is already out of date, because medical science can do it. Sooner or later, Jesus will have to be completely forgotten. If he was simply curing physical eyes, then it is not going to mean much in the future. This can be done by science. And that which can be done by science should be done by science; religion should not enter into it – there is no need. Religion has far higher things to do.

So I insist again and again that these stories are not miracles but parables. People ARE blind, and the Jesus-touch IS a magic touch. He helps them to see, he helps them to become aware, he helps them to become more conscious. He brings the fourth.

To go into the fourth, work is needed. Work in the sense that Gurdjieff used to use that word. Work means a great effort to transform your being, a great effort to center your being, a great effort to drop all that which creates darkness and to bring all that which can help a little light come in. If a door has to be opened, then open the door and let the light come in. If a wall has to be broken, then break the wall and let the light come in. Work means a conscious effort to search, to inquire to explore into the dimension of the fourth – into light, into awareness – and a conscious effort to drop all that which helps you remain unconscious, to drop all that which keeps you mechanical.

A man bought a farm and a sow. He asked his wife to watch the sow, explaining that if she saw it eating grass it was ready for mating and could be taken to the next farm. A couple of days later his wife told him that the sow had started to eat grass. So the farmer put it on a barrow and took it to the next farm to be mated. When he came back, he told his wife to watch the sow again. ‘If the sow eats grass again, it has not taken’ he explained.

A few days later, his wife reported that the sow was eating grass again. So it was put on the barrow and taken for mating again. The farmer brought it back and again asked his wife to watch it closely. Two days later he asked his wife if it had been eating grass again.

‘No’ she said ‘but it’s sitting in the barrow.’

The mechanical mind, the instinctive mind, the repetitive mind – that has to be broken and dropped. Work means an alchemical change. Great effort is needed. Hard and arduous is the path. It is an uphill task.

- Osho

Excerpted from I Say Unto You, Vol.1, chapter 7

lonestar

29-04-2012, 07:51 PM

"Again there is only one time left – present, but now it is conscious present. Past is no more hanging around. A man who is aware cannot move in the past, because it is no more. A man who is aware cannot move in the future, because it is not yet. A man who is aware lives in the present, herenow. HERE is his only space and NOW is his only time. And because he is only herenow, time as such disappears. Eternity is born, timelessness is born. And when one is totally alert, ego cannot exist.

Ego is a shadow cast in unawareness. When all is light, the ego cannot exist. You will be able to see the falsity of it, the pseudo-ness of it. And in that very seeing is its disappearance."

but its lots of work to get rid of the shadows..

i cant remember has Osho ever talked about humans having an old advanced culture and that we're just the clueless survivors?

Osho – To be asleep means to live a life in which awareness has no place. You are doing something, but your mind is somewhere else. You are walking along the street, your body is there in the street, but your mind is having a conversation with your wife, or may already have reached the office ahead of your physical arrival there. Your mind is already making arrangements in the office while you are still walking along the street. Mind in one place, body in another, is the characteristic of lack of awareness. Mind accompanying body is the characteristic of awareness.

You are here, listening to me. In these moments of listening, if your hearing is all, if only your hearing remains and your mind wanders nowhere else but is here and now, if hearing is the only thing happening, as if the rest of the world has disappeared, as if nothing else remains. Here, I am the speaker, there, you are the listener and a bridge is created between us. Your mind does nothing else, it falls silent, utterly silent; it hears, only hears. When only hearing remains, you experience awareness. For the first time, you discover what meditation is.

Meditation means being in the moment, not leaving this moment. Someone asked Buddha, ”How shall we meditate?”
Buddha replied, ”Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment – this is meditation.”

Meditation is not a separate process. Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness. Meditation is not an hour-a-day affair where you sit for one hour and then it is over till tomorrow. No, if twenty-three hours are empty of meditation and only one hour is meditative, then it is certain that the twenty-three hours will defeat the single hour. Non-meditation will win, meditation will lose. If you are living twenty-three hours a day without awareness, and only one hour with awareness, then you will never attain to the state of buddhahood. How can this single hour triumph over the other twenty-three hours?

There is something else that also has to be understood. How can one be aware for one hour if in the remaining twenty-three hours one is not aware? How can you be healthy for one hour if you are sick the other twenty-three hours of the day? Health and sickness are the result of an internal flow. If you are healthy for twenty-three hours of the day, you will be healthy for all twenty-four hours, because the internal flow cannot suddenly be broken for just one of those hours. The current that is flowing goes on flowing.

Meditation cannot come about just because you visit a temple or mosque or gurudwara.. If you were not awake in the shop, in the marketplace, or at home, how can you all of a sudden be awake in the temple? Nothing is going to come about suddenly, when it is not part of an internal flowing. This is why Buddha has said that meditation can happen only if you are meditative for twenty-four hours a day.

So understand well that meditation is not just one of life’s innumerable activities. It is not just one link in the chain of man’s endless doings. It is like the thread on which all the flowers of a garland have been strung. Meditation is a lifestyle, not an activity. If one is meditative in everything one is doing, if the thread is running through each of the flowers, only then a garland is created. The thread is not even visible, it is hidden underneath the flowers. Nor can the meditator be seen; he is present, but hidden behind all the activities being done through him. An individual is awakened the day when he begins to live meditatively. While he lives nonmeditatively, he sleeps.

Someone asked Mahavira what was the definition of a sadhu. Nobody else has ever given the answer that Mahavira gave. He said, Asutta muni, sutta amuni – the one who is not asleep is a sadhu, the one who is asleep is no sadhu”. Who is not asleep? The one whose every action is meditative is not asleep. Religion, liberation, is an experience that happens in such a wakeful consciousness

Source – Osho Book “Nowhere To Go But In”

heartbeatsalute

29-04-2012, 08:38 PM

"Again there is only one time left – present, but now it is conscious present. Past is no more hanging around. A man who is aware cannot move in the past, because it is no more. A man who is aware cannot move in the future, because it is not yet. A man who is aware lives in the present, herenow. HERE is his only space and NOW is his only time. And because he is only herenow, time as such disappears. Eternity is born, timelessness is born. And when one is totally alert, ego cannot exist.

Ego is a shadow cast in unawareness. When all is light, the ego cannot exist. You will be able to see the falsity of it, the pseudo-ness of it. And in that very seeing is its disappearance."

but its lots of work to get rid of the shadows..

i cant remember has Osho ever talked about humans having an old advanced culture and that we're just the clueless survivors?

I don't think so, Osho is all for the individual, not the cultures, no matter how good they may have been. Of course there were great individuals in all cultures. And as he says somewhere there will always be a hierarchy. But it is the individual that counts in everything. .

He has also said that everyone thinks their age is the darkest, but problems will be around always.and prophets of doom and all that.I remember Osho saying the more educated people become (more culture) the easily more cruel they become. Culture is something OUTER which doesn't feed the INNER, the culture has to be transformed to meditation, not the meditating individual.
The system will use you , probably what is needed is more higher human and spiritual technology ,but unless you do something for yourself, things will remain the same lonestar.

It all amounts to human war against greed , stupidity and unawareness.

heartbeatsalute

29-04-2012, 08:39 PM

http://www.kuartadimension.com/imagenes/img-blog/osho04.jpg

Osho on Atlantis

Donnerstag, den 13. Mai 2010 um 00:00 Uhr

Render to the immortal gods the consecrated cult. Guard then thy faith:
Revere the memory of the illustrious heroes, of spirits, demi-gods....
Be a good son, just brother; spouse tender, and good father.
Choose for thy friend, the friend of virtue; yield to his gentle counsels,
profit by his life, and for a trifling grievance never leave him;
if thou canst at least: for a most rigid law binds power to necessity.

Pythagoras represents the eternal Pilgrim for philosophia perennis - the perennial philosophy of life. He is a seeker of truth par excellence. He staked all that he had for the search. He traveled far and wide, almost the whole known world of those days, in search of the Masters, of the mystery schools, of any hidden secrets. From Greece he went to Egypt -- in search of the lost Atlantis and its secrets.

In Egypt, the great library of Alexandria was still intact. It had all the secrets of the past preserved. It was the greatest library that has ever existed on the earth; later on it was destroyed by a Mohammedan fanatic. The library was so big that when it was burnt, for six months the fire continued.

Just twenty-five centuries before Pythagoras, a great continent, Atlantis, had disappeared into the ocean. The ocean that is called Atlantic is so called because of that continent, Atlantis.

Atlantis was the ancientmost continent of the earth, and civilization had reached the highest possible peaks. But whenever a civilization reaches a great peak there is a danger: the danger of falling apart, the danger of committing suicide.

Humanity is facing that same danger again. When man becomes powerful, he does not know what to do with that power. When the power is too much and the understanding is too little, power has always proved dangerous. Atlantis was not drowned in the ocean by any natural calamity. It was actually the same thing that is happening today: it was man's own power over nature. It was through atomic energy that Atlantis was drowned -- it was man's own suicide. But all the scriptures and all the secrets of Atlantis were still preserved in Alexandria.
All over the world there are parables, stories, about the great flood.

Those stories have come from the drowning of Atlantis. All those stories -- Christian, Jewish, Hindu -- they all talk about a great flood that had come once in the past and had destroyed almost the whole civilization. Just a few initiates, adepts, had survived. Noah is an adept; a great Master, and Noah's ark is just a symbol.

A few people escaped the calamity. With them, all the secrets that the civilization had attained survived. They were preserved in Alexandria.

Pythagoras lived in Alexandria for years. He studied, he was initiated into the mystery schools of Egypt -- particularly the mysteries of Hermes. Then he came to India, was initiated into all that the brahmins of this ancient land had discovered, all that India had known in the inner world of man.

For years he was in India, then he traveled to Tibet and then to China. That was the whole known world. His whole life he was a seeker, a pilgrim, in search of a philosophy -- philosophy in the true sense of the word: love for wisdom. He was a lover, a philosopher -- not in the modern sense of the word but in the old, ancient sense of the word. Because a lover cannot only speculate, a lover cannot only think about truth: a lover has to search, risk, adventure.

Truth is the beloved. How can you go on only thinking about it? You have to be connected with the beloved through the heart. The search cannot be only intellectual; it has to be deep down intuitive. Maybe the beginning has to be intellectual, but only the beginning. Just the starting point has to be intellectual, but finally it has to reach the very core of your being.

He was one of the most generous of men, most liberal, democratic, unprejudiced, open. He was respected all over the world. From Greece to China he was revered. He was accepted in every mystic school; with great joy he was welcomed everywhere. His name was known in all the lands. Wherever he went he was received with great rejoicing.

Even though he had become enlightened, he still continued to reach into hidden secrets, he still continued to ask to be initiated into new schools. He was trying to create a synthesis; he was trying to know the truth through as many possibilities as is humanly possible. He wanted to know truth in all its aspects, in all its dimensions.

He was always ready to bow down to a Master. He himself was an enlightened man -- it is very rare. Once you have become enlightened, the search stops, the seeking disappears. There is no point.

Buddha became enlightened... then he never went to any other Master. Jesus became enlightened... then he never went to any other Master. Or Lao Tzu, or Zarathustra, or Moses.... Hence Pythagoras is something unique. No parallel has ever existed. Even after becoming enlightened, he was ready to become a disciple to anybody who was there to reveal some aspect of truth.

His search was such that he was ready to learn from anybody. He was an absolute disciple. He was ready to learn from the whole existence. He remained open, and he remained a learner to the very end.

The whole effort was... and it was a great effort in those days, to travel from Greece to China. It was full of dangers. The journey was hazardous; it was not easy as it is today. Today things are so easy that you can take your breakfast in New York and your lunch in London, and you can suffer indigestion in Poona. Things are very simple. In those days it was not so simple. It was really a risk; to move from one country to another country took years.

By the time Pythagoras came back, he was a very old man. But seekers gathered around him; a great school was born. And, as it always happens, the society started persecuting him and his school and his disciples. His whole life he searched for the perennial philosophy, and he had found it! He had gathered all the fragments into a tremendous harmony, into a great unity. But he was not allowed to work it out in detail - to teach people he was not allowed.

He was persecuted from one place to another. Many attempts were made on his life. It was almost impossible for him to teach all that he had gathered. And his treasure was immense -- in fact, nobody else has ever had such a treasure as he had. But this is how foolish humanity is, and has always been. This man had done something impossible: he had bridged East and West. He was the first bridge. He had come to know the Eastern mind as deeply as the Western mind.

He was a Greek. He was brought up with the Greek logic, with the Greek scientific approach, and then he moved to the East. And then he learnt the ways of intuition. Then he learnt how to be a mystic. He himself was a great mathematician in his own right. And a mathematician becoming a mystic is a revolution, because these are poles apart.
The West represents the male mind, aggressive intellect.

The East represents the female mind, receptive intuition. East and West are not just arbitrary -- the division is very very significant and profound.

And you should not forget Rudyard Kipling: what he said has significance, has meaning. He says East and West shall never meet. There is a fragment of truth in it, because the meeting seems to be impossible; the ways of their working are so diametrically opposite.

The West is aggressive, scientific, ready to conquer nature. The East is non-aggressive, receptive -- ready to be conquered by nature. The West is eager to know. The East is patient. The West takes every initiative to reach into the mysteries of life and existence; it tries to unlock the doors. And the East simply waits in profound trust: "Whenever I am worthy, the truth will be revealed to me."

The West is concentration of the mind: the East is meditation of the mind. The West is thinking: the East is non-thinking. The West is mind: the East is no-mind. And Kipling seems to be logically right, that it seems impossible that East and West could ever meet.

And "the East and the West" does not only represent the earth being divided in two hemispheres: it represents your mind too, your brain too. Your brain is also divided in two hemispheres just like the earth. Your brain has an East in it and a West in it. The left-side hemisphere of your brain is the West; it is connected with the right hand. And the right-side hemisphere of your brain is the East; it is connected with the left hand.

The West is rightist. The East is leftist. And the processes of both are so different.... The left hemisphere of your mind calculates, thinks, is logical. All science is produced by it. And the right hemisphere of your brain is a poet, is a mystic. It intuits, it feels. It is vague, cloudy, misty. Nothing is clear. Everything is a kind of chaos, but that chaos has its beauty. There is great poetry in that chaos, there is great song in that chaos. It is very juicy.
The calculative mind is a desert-like phenomenon. And the non-calculative mind is a garden. Birds sing there and flowers bloom... it is a totally different world.

Pythagoras was the first man to try the impossible, and he succeeded! In him, East and West became one. In him, yin and yang became one. In him, male and female became one. He was an ardhanarishwar -- a total unity of the polar opposites. Shiva and Shakti together: intellect of the highest caliber and intuition of the deepest caliber. Pythagoras is a peak, a sunlit peak, and a deep, dark valley too. It is a very rare combination.

But his whole life's effort was destroyed by the stupid people, by the mediocre masses. These few verses are the only contribution left. These verses can be written on one postcard. This is all that is left of that great man's effort, endeavor. And this too is not written by his own hand; it seems all that he had written was destroyed.
The day Pythagoras died, thousands of his disciples were massacred and burnt.

Only one disciple escaped the school; his name was Lysis. And he escaped, not to save his life -- he escaped just to save something of the Master's teachings. These Golden Verses of Pythagoras were written by Lysis, the only disciple who survived.

The whole school was burnt, and thousands of disciples were simply murdered and butchered. And all that Pythagoras had accumulated on his journeys -- great treasures, great scriptures from China, India, Tibet, Egypt, years and years of work -- all was burnt.

Lysis wrote these few verses. And, as it has been the ancient tradition that a real disciple knows no other name than his Master's, these verses are not called Lysis' Verses -- they are called The Golden Verses of Pythagoras. He has not written his name on them.

This has been happening again and again. It happened with Vyasa in India, a great Master. In his name there are so many scriptures that it is impossible that one man could write so many scriptures. It is humanly impossible. Even if one thousand persons wrote their whole lives continuously, then too so many scriptures could not be written. Then what happened? They are all authored by Vyasa -- they are not all written by Vyasa but by his disciples. But the real disciple knows no other name than his Master's. He has disappeared in the Master, so whatsoever he writes, he writes in the name of the Master. So many theories have been evolved by linguists, by scholars, by professors -- they think there have been so many Vyasas, many people of the same name. That is all nonsense. There has been only one Vyasa. But down the centuries many people loved him so deeply that when they wrote something, they felt it was the Master writing through them -- they signed the Master's name because they were only vehicles, just instruments, mediums.

The same happened in Egypt to Hermes: many scriptures, all written by the disciples. And the same happened with Orpheus in Greece, and the same with Lao Tzu in China and Confucius in China.

The disciple loses his identity. He becomes utterly one with the Master. But something of immense value has been destroyed by the stupidity of people.
Pythagoras is the first experiment in creating a synthesis.

Twenty-five centuries have passed since then and nobody else has tried it again. Nobody else before had done it, and nobody else has done it afterwards either. It needs a mind which is both -- scientific and mystic. It is a rare phenomenon. It happens once in a while.

There have been great mystics - Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra. And there have been great scientists - Newton, Edison, Einstein. But to find a man who is at home with both worlds, easily at home, is very difficult. Pythagoras is that kind of man - a class unto himself. He cannot be categorized by anybody else.

The synthesis that he tried was needed, particularly in his days, as it is needed today -- because the world is again at the same point. The world moves in a wheel. The Sanskrit word for "the world" is samsara. Samsara means the wheel. The wheel is big: one circle is completed in twenty-five centuries. Twenty-five centuries before Pythagoras, Atlantis committed suicide -- out of man's own scientific growth. But without wisdom, scientific growth is dangerous. It is putting a sword in the hands of a child.

Now twenty-five centuries have passed since Pythagoras. Again the world is in a chaos. Again the wheel has come to the same point - it always comes to the same point. It takes twenty-five centuries for this moment to happen. After each twenty-five centuries the world comes into a state of great chaos.

Man becomes uprooted, starts feeling meaningless. All the values of life disappear. A great darkness surrounds. Sense of direction is lost. One simply feels accidental. There seems to be no purpose, no significance. Life seems to be just a by-product of chance. It seems existence does not care for you. It seems there is no life after death. It seems whatsoever you do is futile, routine, mechanical. All seems to be pointless.

These times of chaos, disorder, can either be a great curse, as it happened in Atlantis, or they can prove a quantum leap in human growth. It depends on how we use them. It is only in such great times of chaos that great stars are born.

Pythagoras was not alone. In Greece, Pythagoras and Heraclitus were born. In India, Buddha and Mahavira and many others. In China, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius, Mencius, Lieh Tzu, and many more. In Iran, Zarathustra. In the brahmin tradition, many great upanishadic seers. In the world of Judaism, Moses.... All these people, these great Masters were born at a certain stage in human history -- twenty-five centuries ago.

Now we are again in a great chaos, and man's fate will depend on what we do. Either we will destroy ourselves like the civilization that destroyed itself in Atlantis -- the whole world will become a Hiroshima; we will be drowned in our own knowledge; in our own science we will commit suicide, a collective suicide. A few, a Noah and a few of his followers, may be saved, or may not be.... Or, there is a possibility that we can take a quantum leap.

Either man can commit suicide, or man can be reborn. Both doors are open.

If such times can create people like Heraclitus and Lao Tzu and Zarathustra and Pythagoras and Buddha and Confucius, why can they not create a great humanity? They can. But we go on missing the opportunity.

The ordinary masses live in such unconsciousness that they can't see even a few steps ahead. They are blind. And they are the majority! The coming twenty-five years, the last part of this century, is going to be of immense value. If we can create a great momentum in the world for meditation, for the inward journey, for tranquillity, for stillness, for love, for God... if we can create a space in these coming twenty-five years for God to happen to many many people, humanity will have a new birth, a resurrection. A new man will be born.

And once you miss these times, then for twenty-five centuries again you will remain the same. A few people will achieve enlightenment, but it will remain only for a few people. Here and there, once in a while, a person will become alert and aware and divine. But the greater part of humanity goes on lagging behind -- in darkness, in utter darkness, in absolute misery. The greater part of humanity goes on living in hell.

But these moments when chaos spreads and man loses his roots in the past, becomes unhinged from the past, are great moments. If we can learn something from the past history, if we can learn something from Pythagoras.... People could not use Pythagoras and his understanding, they could not use his great synthesis, they could not use the doors that he had made available. A single individual had done something immense, something impossible, but it was not used.

I am trying to do exactly the same again.

I feel a very deep spiritual affinity with Pythagoras. I am also bringing you a synthesis of East and West, of science and religion, of intellect and intuition, of the male mind and the female mind, of the head and the heart, of the right and the left. I am also trying in every possible way to create a great harmony, because only that harmony can save. Only that harmony can give you a new birth.

But there is every possibility that what was done to Pythagoras will be done to me. And there is every possibility what was done to Pythagoras' followers will be done to my sannyasins. But still, even knowing that possibility, the effort has to be made again. Because this is a valuable time. It comes only once in twenty-five centuries when the wheel can move in a new way, can take a new direction.

You all have to risk, and you have to risk all that you have. And risk it with great joy! Because what can be more joyous than to give birth to a new man, to become vehicles for a new man, for a new humanity?

It is going to be painful as every birth is painful. But the pain can be welcomed if you understand what is going to happen through it. If you can see the child coming out of it, then the pain is no more pain -- just as the mother can accept the pain of the child's birth. The pain is irrelevant: her heart is dancing with joy -- she is going to give birth to life, she is being creative. She is making this world more alive; a new child is being born through her. God has used her as a vehicle; her womb has proved fertile. She is happy, in great joy. She rejoices, although the pain is there on the periphery. But when this great joy is there, the pain simply functions as a background and makes the joy even more loud. Remember....

My sannyasins can become an energy womb, an energy field. A great synthesis is happening here. East and West are meeting here. And if we can make this impossible thing happen, man will live in a totally different way in the future. He will not need to live in the same old hell. Man can live in love, in peace. Man can live in great friendliness. Man can live a life which is nothing but a celebration. Man can make this earth divine.
Yes: this very earth can become the paradise and this very body the Buddha.
The sutras, they are few.

Pythagoras' sutras are divided into three parts; they are known as the three famous P's of Pythagoras: preparation, purification, perfection.

Preparation means getting ready, into a receptive mood, becoming available, opening up. Preparation means creating a thirst, a longing for truth. Preparation means, not only curious, not only intellectually interested in what truth is, but committed to the search. Not just as a speculator standing outside but as a participant.

Preparation is the introductory part -- to create a great thirst in you. Whenever you come close to a Master, the first thing that he is going to give you is a fiery thirst. A great longing he will give to you; he will sow the seeds of great longing. In fact, he will make you very discontented.

You may have come to him in search of contentment, you may have come to him to be consoled, but he will make you aflame, afire, with a new desire that you have not even dreamt about, of which you have never been aware. Maybe it was lurking there somewhere in the dark nooks and corners of your being, or hiding in some recesses underground -- he will bring it forth into light, he will provoke it into a great fire. He will pour all his energy into you, to make you so thirsty, so discontented, that you start the search and you become ready to risk all; that you forget all about other desires, that you pour all your desires into one stream, that your only desire, day and night, becomes truth -- or God, or Nirvana. Those are just names for the same phenomenon.

Preparation means the disciple is being awakened -- awakened to the truth that we are existing in darkness and light has to be searched for and sought, awakened to the fact that we have been wasting our lives, that this is not the right way to live. Unless one starts moving towards God, life remains empty, impotent. The disciple has to be shocked, shaken, out of his dreams -- dreams of money and power politics and prestige -- and he has to be given a new dream, the ultimate dream, in which all dreams will be consumed. The ultimate dream is to know truth, to know that which is, to know that from which we come, to know that source and to know that goal to which we are going.

Then the second part is purification. When the desire has arisen then you have to be purified, because to reach the ultimate truth you will have to drop much unnecessary weight, much luggage that you have always carried. You have carried it because you have been thinking it is very valuable. Your system has to be purified of all the toxic things that you have absorbed on the way. And we have been drinking poison, many kinds of poison. One is a Hindu. Another is a Mohammedan, another is a Christian -- these are all poisons, prejudices. They keep you tethered to the society, to the conditionings of the society.

Purification means one has to drop all conditionings, all ideologies, all prejudices, all concepts, all philosophies...all that you have been taught by others. One has to become a clean slate -- a tabula rasa -- one has to become utterly clean. Only when you are utterly clean, when nothing is written on you, can God write something. Only when you are utterly silent and all words given by the society have disappeared can God speak to you. Truth can whisper its mysteries into your ears only when you are absolutely empty -- emptiness is purity.

Purification is a purgative part. Man has to drop many things. In fact, truth is not far away -- you have just accumulated many things around yourself. You have grown many layers around yourself, many personalities around yourself, many masks you are wearing. Hence you cannot see your original face. All those masks have to be dropped. You have to become authentic, truly as you are, utterly naked as you are.

Purification means: Stop hiding! Stop lying! Stop being phony!

And third is perfection. When you have stopped being phony, when you have dropped all the poisons that you had gathered on the way, when the dust is cleaned off the mirror, then perfection starts happening of its own accord.

Perfection is the unitive part - Unio Mystica.

First the desire, intense desire, a total desire... because only if you are totally desirous of truth then you will be ready to go through the pains of purification. If the desire is lukewarm you will not be ready to go through the pains of purification.

It is painful to be purified! It is like taking pus out of your body - it hurts. Although it is good in the long run - if the pus is out, the poison is out and you will heal soon - but it hurts. To take the pus out is painful. But to leave it inside is to help it to grow; it will spread all over your body.

One can only be ready to go through purification if the desire is so total that one is ready even to die for it if that is needed. And it is a kind of death -- because the personality that you have always thought you are will have to die. You will have to drop all that you are identified with. And that has been your ego. You will have to surrender all that you have been claiming up to now and bragging up to now; all that has been precious to you has to be dropped as utter rubbish. It IS painful. It feels as if you are losing your kingdom and you are becoming a beggar.

Unless the desire is total you will not be ready to do it. And when purification has happened, when you have dropped all that is non-essential, then the essential perfects itself. You need not become perfect! You have only to create the space in which perfection grows, happens. Perfection is a happening.

The first sutra - preparation:
Render to the immortal gods the consecrated cult; guard then thy faith.

Lord Bacon, a great scientific mind, has written in his famous book, Novum Organum, that Pythagoras was a great fanatic. Now, this is utter nonsense. Bacon's book is really great; except for this one statement, the book is of immense value.

It is said that there are three great books in the world. First is Aristotle's Organum -- "organum" means principle. The second is Bacon's Novum Organum -- new principle. And third is Ouspensky's Tertium Organum -- the third principle. And they are really great books, incomparable.

But it is very surprising how Bacon concluded that Pythagoras was a fanatic -- because Pythagoras was just the opposite, the absolute opposite of a fanatic. If he had been a fanatic he would not have entered into all kinds of esoteric, occult schools. If he had been a fanatic he would not have been so open to learn from every possible source. In fact, fanaticism has never been part of the Greek mind.

The philosophic mind cannot be fanatic, cannot be dogmatic. That is a prerequisite of philosophy, that you have to be open, that you have to inquire, that you have to doubt, that you have to question, and that you have to remain available to truth in whatsoever form it comes. That you are not to decide beforehand; you have not to fall into that kind of attitude which has already concluded without knowing. You are not to be a victim of the fallacy of "aprioriism" -- that you have already accepted from the very beginning without inquiring, without knowing, without experiencing.

I have tried hard to see why Bacon should call Pythagoras a fanatic. Fanaticism came out of the Judaic mind; it was never part of the Hindu mind or the Chinese mind or the Greek mind. It came out of the Jews. And it spread to Christians and Mohammedans because both are offshoots of Judaism.

The idea that "We are the chosen people of God" is dangerous. It creates fanaticism. The idea that "We have the truth, and nobody else" is dangerous; that "There is only one God and no other Gods" is dangerous -- because that one God is going to be my God. And then what will happen to your God? Then you are wrong, then you are a sinner. Then you have to be persuaded, converted. If you allow easily, okay; otherwise you have to be forced and coerced so that you can drop the wrong God.

Pythagoras lived in so many countries, with so many different visions of life, with so many philosophical standpoints, with so many religions - he could not be a fanatic. It seems Bacon knew nothing about Pythagoras.

The first sutra says:
Render to the immortal gods...

He does not use the word "God" but "Gods" - that is significant. That is the state of a non-fanatic mind. "Gods" - why plural? Why not "God"? Because the moment you say "God" you are falling into that dangerous trap...then what will happen to other peoples' Gods?

Pythagoras is not a monotheist; he does not believe in one God. He says: All the peoples of the world and all their approaches are true. And he knows it, because he has followed many many paths; almost all existent paths Pythagoras followed many many paths; almost all existent paths Pythagoras followed. And he always reached the same peak.

There are many paths by which to reach the peak. The mountain has many paths, but they all reach the same peak. You can go from the south or from the north or from the east or from the west... you can follow a very rocky track, or you can follow a very different track. There are many alternatives.

Pythagoras knows truth is one, but he does not say it. Truth is one un-said. Once you say it, then please don't use the singular; then it is better to use the plural. The Vedas say: Truth is one, but wise people have described it in many ways.

Render to the immortal gods the consecrated cult...

He had lived with many people, worshippers of different Gods. He says to his disciples: When you go to the temple, worship the God of the temple, and worship the way people are worshipping there. Respect the people who are worshipping and praying. And when you go to the mosque, worship the way people are worshipping there. And when you go to the church or the synagogue, worship the way people are worshipping there.

This is my approach too. All prayers are good. All prayers reach to him, and all paths ultimately end in him. There is no need to create any antagonism. To my sannyasins this is my message: If you want a silent, isolated place, a temple or a church or a mosque, then whichever is close by, enter there. All temples and all churches and all mosques are yours. Claim that "Whichever place is dedicated to God is ours. Jerusalem and Kaaba and Kailash and Girnar -- all are ours." I give you all the temples of the world as yours and all the scriptures of the world as yours.

Pythagoras is saying to his disciples: Wherever you are, watch the people, respect their prayer, respect their God, respect their vision. It may be only one aspect, but it is an aspect of God himself. It may be only one face -- God has many faces -- but all the manifestations are his. In one way he descends in Krishna, in another he descends in Christ, in still another he descends into Moses. All prophets are his, all messengers are his.
Render to the immortal gods the consecrated cult...

And whatsoever you believe, don't just believe it -- consecrate it, make it holy by living. Let it not remain just an intellectual belief in the head: it has to become existential. Then it is consecrated, then you have made it holy and sacred.

Beliefs, if they are only thoughts, are useless. Unless they become your very blood, bones and marrow, unless you live them...if you feel something is true, live it! because that will be the only proof that you feel it is true. There is no other proof. Only your life is a proof of your belief.

But that does not mean you should impose a belief upon yourself. That does not mean you should force a belief and a character upon yourself. That will not be making it sacred: that will be hypocrisy. And how can hypocrisy be sacred? Live it, not from the without towards the within, but just the opposite: from the within towards the without. First experience a truth....

For example: I say meditate. Now, you can make it just a belief -- that it is good to meditate, that meditation contains great truths, that you can now argue with others about the beauties, about the mysteries of meditation. You have never meditated yourself, and you don't have time enough because of the arguments and the thinking about and reading about meditation... and you have completely forgotten that meditation has to be tasted, not to be argued.

Or, you can impose, violently, some meditative posture upon yourself. You can sit silently like a Buddha -- although there is no buddhahood inside, no silence, no purity, no innocence. The inner talk continues, but on the surface you can sit like a stone statue. This is hypocrisy: you are simply pretending. This is not the way to consecrate. This is not the way to make something sacred.

You have to really go into meditation, not to pretend. And whenever you live a truth, the truth becomes consecrated.
Render to the immortal gods the consecrated cult...

And whatsoever you have known, offer it to God, go on offering it to God -- whatsoever you have known. Whatsoever experience has happened to you, of truth, of beauty, of love, go on offering it to God, go on offering in deep gratitude.

Guard then thy faith:

But don't tell it to people. Guard it. Offer it to the God, but don't talk about it, otherwise you will be in danger. The masses are foolish. They cannot understand. It is beyond them. Guard! Keep it secret deep down in your heart. Open your heart to the Gods. Open your heart to your Master, or open your heart to the friends who are following the same path, the fellow-travelers, the fellow-seekers. But don't open your heart in the marketplace - you will be misunderstood.

And the misunderstanding will create disturbance for you, it will distract your search, it will disrupt your energies. It will create turmoil in you. Truths can be communicated only to people who have some understanding.

Guard then thy faith:

And whatsoever trust has arisen in you, whatsoever faith is born in you, keep it secret. It has to become a seed in your heart. If you just throw the seed on the ground it will not grow into a tree, because it is open. It has to go deep into the womb of the earth, into the darkness of the earth. There it will disappear, dissolve, and a tree will be born.

Whatsoever trust has arisen in you, let it become a seed in your heart, let it disappear into the soil of the heart. There it will grow into a big tree. Yes, one day it will happen that you will not be able to contain it any more, but then what can you do? As long as you can contain, contain it. As long as you can keep it a secret, keep it a secret. Just like the child in the mother's womb remains secret for nine months, but one day the mother cannot contain it.... The child has grown. Now the child is ready to be born, then it is perfectly okay.

Why is Pythagoras saying it? Why in the first sutra? For a certain reason: because whenever you have a little glimpse of truth, the mind tends to talk about it. And in that very talking you lose it. It is like an abortion. Let it remain for nine months a secret, a mystery, known only to yourself, or your beloved, or a few friends, but not to the public. It is a private phenomenon.

Yes, one day it is going to become public. One day you will not be able to contain it any more. It will have become so big, bigger than you, that it will have to overflow. When it starts overflowing, it is another matter. You become a Master then. But till that moment arrives, be very guarded, be very watchful. Don't talk about your inner experiences to each and everybody. Keep alert, because truth is very difficult to get hold of and it is very easy to lose track of. Trust is very difficult to be born in, and very easy to dissipate.

Revere the memory of the illustrious heroes, of spirits, demi-gods....

First:
Render to the immortal gods the consecrated cult. Guard then the faith:

Second sutra: Remember all those who have attained before you, cherish their memory -- that will help you on the way. There will be many moments when suspicion will arise, doubts will arise; there will be long long dark nights of the soul when you will feel utterly lost, when you will start thinking of going back and being just the ordinary person you had been before. In those moments revere the memory of the buddhas revere the memory of all those great heroes who have attained to truth.

In Pythagoras' language, the hero means one who has become enlightened, who has attained the truth. The only heroic deed in life is to become realized. All else is very ordinary.

You can become very famous -- it is very easy. You can have political power -- it does not need much intelligence. You can earn money -- you have only to be a little cunning and calculative. These are not great things.

The only great thing that makes a life great and sublime is to know truth, is to know God, is to be truth, is to be God. But the journey is very alone.
Revere the memory of the illustrious heroes...

...Of Buddha, of Lao Tzu, of Krishna, of Christ, of Moses, of Mohammed, of Mahavira. Remember! That's why I am talking on so many Masters: so you can remember that you are not alone on the path. Many have succeeded before you. You will also succeed. If so many have succeeded, why not you? Many have preceded you and reached. You are not moving alone; many are ahead of you. It is a long procession of truth-seekers. You are part of a great chain. You may be a small drop, but you are part of a great river -- the river of uddhas, of all the enlightened people of the world.

That's why I am talking about so many enlightened people: to give you courage, to give you confidence; to give you the sense that you are in a great chain, part of a golden chain, and you are not moving alone. There is no need to be afraid. You cannot be lost!

Revere the memory of the illustrious heroes, of spirits, demi-gods.…

One who attains to God becomes a demi-god, becomes a God himself. One who has known him has become him. Cherish the memory, remind yourself. And find out with whom you feel affinity. Do you feel affinity with Moses? Do you feel affinity with Zarathustra? If you feel some affinity, then the best way is to ponder over the sayings of Zarathustra or Moses - meditate, think of their lives, create a climate around yourself. Because if you feel affinity with somebody, that means you are of the same type.

And it is not a question of your accidental birth. You may be born a Mohammedan and you may not feel any affinity with Mohammed. There is no necessity. Birth is accidental. You may be born a Hindu and you may not feel any affinity with Krishna, or you may even feel a certain antagonism. You may not be the type!

So don't be too much identified with your birth. Roam around. Have a little more freedom. Look around. Whichever flower attracts you, follow that. Whichever fragrance calls you, follow that fragrance. So you may be a Hindu by birth, but if you feel that the Koran simply rings bells in your heart, then the Koran is your scripture. Forget all about Hinduism! Then Mohammed is your man -- forget all about Krishna!

You may be born a Mohammedan, but if seeing the statue of Buddha something immediately settles in you, becomes serene, calm and cool; just the same of Buddha and you feel great love arising in you for this unknown mysterious person…. Then forget all about Mohammedanism and the Koran and Mohammed Then create the climate of Buddha around you, because that will be helpful, that will nourish you, that will strengthen you.

The second part: purification. This was preparation: respect all the Gods of the world, all the temples, all the sacred places; respect all the scriptures. This is your respect for other human beings. And remember with great love all those who have preceded you on the path and have reached.

This will prepare a climate in you. And this will create a great desire in you, this will become a longing. And you will be gripped by the longing, you will be possessed by the longing. If Buddha has touched your heart, a great longing is bound to arise: How to become a Buddha? If Christ has been felt at the deepest core of your being, then it is bound to happen that you will start working, searching: How to become a Christ? How to attain to Christ-consciousness? Once the desire is there, then purification is possible.

The second part: purification.
Be a good son, just brother; spouse tender, and good father.

You will be surprised by this sutra, but it is of immense value:

You will think, "What has it to do with spirituality?" It has much to do with spirituality. You have to create a peaceful surrounding -- only then can you fall into meditation. You have to create an atmosphere, an energy field -- only then can you go inwards.

In Gurdjieff's school in Fontainebleau it was written on the gate: "If you have not settled your accounts with your father, go back." First settle your accounts with your father, then come. Unless you respect your father, there is no possibility of your growing. Strange! Why? What has it to do with the search?

And from another corner there is psychoanalysis which says: "Settle your accounts with your mother." Unless that is settled, you will never feel settled. You will remain tense. The whole of psychoanalytic work is how to close accounts between you and your mother -- gracefully, lovingly.

Pythagoras seems to be the first to say it exactly, simply: Be a good son…. What does it mean to be a good son? Does it mean to be a slave, utterly obedient? If you are a slave, you are not a good son. If you are utterly obedient, you are a hypocrite. Then what does it mean to be a good son?

If you ask people they will say, "A good son means: do whatsoever your father says." It is not that simple -- because you can do it from the outside and you can resist it from the inside. That's what children have to do! They are helpless. Whatsoever the parents say, they have to do it, willingly, unwillingly, reluctantly -- they have to do it. That creates a split in them. They become two. They start becoming false, phony.

So one way that is ordinarily thought: just be obedient to the father and you are a good son. That is not the meaning of Pythagoras. Then does he mean rebel against the father? Go against him? Do just the opposite of whatsoever he says? Be a hippie or yippie or something? If he says have short hair then have long hair? If he says, "Take a bath every day," then forget all about taking a bath for years? If he says, "Cleanliness is next to God," then be dirty and claim that dirtiness is next to God? No, that is not the meaning of being a good son either.

In fact, the second thing has happened in the world because the first has persisted too long. Too much enforced obedience has created a reaction. Then who is a good son?

A good son is one who is alert, understanding, respectful; who listens to the father because the father knows much - he has lived, he has experienced life, he has more experience. He listens to the father. He tries to understand the father. He is open. He is not in a hurry either to obey or to disobey.

A good son is one who is ready to listen, to understand, to learn. And then if you feel that you agree with the father, do it. If you feel you don't agree with the father, then say it. There is no question of reaction. Just make it plain that you don't agree. You will do it, but it will be done with forced effort. It will make you phony. If the father wants, you will do it, but it will make you phony, it will make you split, schizophrenic. It will divide you.

A good communion is needed between the father and the son, because the father represents the past and the son represents the future. A bridge is needed. And it cannot be one-sided, so it is not only for the son to be a good son: the final thing is to be a good father too. He is creating a family atmosphere in which meditation can grow easily.

A good son is one who is alert, ready to obey the father when he feels he is right, ready to say to the father, "I am not willing to do it -- it will be false, it will be phony." And ready to go with the father if he cannot decide on his own, because there may be things which you cannot feel either right or wrong. Then follow the father; he knows better.

And the father simply represents the past. The father simply represents all father figures, all those who are older than you. The father is simply a symbol of all those who have lived more than you, experienced more than you - the teachers, the elders. A great respect is needed - respect for their life, respect for their experience.

There is no need to become a slave, and there is no need to react against them. Understanding is needed - neither obedience nor reaction. And if obedience comes out of understanding, it is beautiful. And if sometimes rebellion comes out of understanding, it is beautiful. But it has to come out of understanding, not out of reaction.

There are people who will not do a certain thing because their father says to do it. How can they do it? Just because the father is saying it, they cannot do it - they will do the opposite. Their egos are in conflict. And there are people who know that it is wrong, but they will do it because the father says to do it. Both are wrong.

The good son is one who listens to the father, to all father-figures, tries to understand with great respect, with openness, with no conclusions. And then whatever decision arises in his being, to follow or not to follow, he goes with it. It is neither reaction nor obedience: it is simply acting out of understanding.

Be a just brother.... With all those who are of your age, be just, don't be unfair. Don't exploit, because if you exploit you create a tension around yourself. Create friendship around yourself, because growth will be easier in a friendly atmosphere.

...Spouse tender.... With your wife, with your husband, be tender, be soft, because love has the other side of hate in it, and unless you understand what it means to be tender, soft, loving, there is every possibility love will bring great hate in you.

People love the same person, and the same person they hate. And that hate destroys all love, poisons all possibilities of love. And love is a great phenomenon. The person who has missed love will never know what prayer is, will never be able to pray. It is only love's experience that prepares you to pray.

Be a spouse tender...love the woman or the man with great tenderness, grace. That has disappeared from the world. People's relationships have become very ungraceful. They have lost the whole language of tenderness - their love life is so full of hate and anger and rage.

That may be one of the reasons why God has become dead in this century. Love has disappeared: prayer cannot arise. Love is the flower, prayer is the fragrance. If the flower is not there, then there cannot be any fragrance.

...And good father. And in your own turn, the circle is complete -- be a good father. What does it mean to be a good father? Don't enforce anything on your child. Give your love, give your understanding, but always make it clear that the choice is the child's. If he wants to follow it he can follow, but he is following his choice. If he wants not to follow, he is free not to follow -- again he is following his choice. Make everything clear to the child. You love him, so give your experience to him but don't enforce it, don't command. Let him understand. Let understanding be the only law, and let him follow his understanding.

Now you can understand: the father has to be just a helper. The father has not to mould the child in a certain pattern that he wants; he has not to use the child for his own ambitions. He has to love the child, make him strong, make him more alert, so that he can search out his own ways in life. Make him more and more independent.

The good father does not cripple the child, does not force the child to depend on him. And if there is a good father, naturally the son will be good, because he will not be forced into any slavery and he will not have to react either.

And if you have been a good son, in your own turn one day you will become a father and you will be a good father.

This is the family atmosphere, the space in which we live. This space has to be of intimacy, of love, of grace. Only then will meditation be easier and spiritual growth enhanced.

Choose for thy friend, the friend of virtue; yield to his gentle counsels, profit by his life, and for a trifling grievance never leave him.…

Friendship has also disappeared from the world. What you call friendship has nothing to do with the ancient idea of friendship. Your friendship is just accidental. You work in the same office, so you have become friendly. Or you study in the same college, so you become friendly. This is not real friendship.

Pythagoras says: Choose for thy friend . You cannot choose your father, you cannot choose your mother, you cannot choose your family -- but you can choose your friend. You can choose your woman, you can choose your man -- that too is an extension of friendship.
Choose for thy friend, the friend of virtue….

...One who has some grace, who has some flowering, who has some quality around him, who has an energy field of virtue. By "virtue" is not meant the righteous, no. Not the holier-than-thou, no. By "virtue" is meant one in whose company you suddenly start feeling a tremendous well-being; in whose company, in whose vibe, something starts dancing in you; whose presence helps you to soar high.

Choose a friend, and then ultimately you will be able to choose a Master -- because the Master is the ultimate friend. If you cannot choose friends you will not be able to choose the Master either. Choose good friends, and then one day you will be able to choose the ultimate friend.

Yield to his gentle counsels, profit by his life….

And when you choose a friend, listen to his counsels. He will not enforce them - they will be gentle whisperings. He will not be very loud. He will not argue, he will not command - he will only suggest, he will only hint, he will only indicate. And that is the case with the ultimate friend, the Master.

Buddha says: Buddhas only point the way. They don't make it very loud because they don't want to be violent. They don't want to drag you according to themselves; they have no desire to dominate you. They simply express whatsoever they have known and understood -- now it is up to you to follow or not to follow.

And learn from his life, be profited by his life -- not only his words, but see the way the friend lives. See his actual life and watch it. This is the only way to learn in life. People are scriptures -- you have to learn how to read the language. People are great secrets, each person is carrying a great secret. If you know how to listen to it you will be tremendously benefited.

And for a trifling grievance never leave him; if thou canst at least: for a most rigid law binds power to necessity.

Pythagoras says there are two laws: one is of necessity, the other is of power. The law of necessity applies to people who are unconscious. People who live mechanically, they live out of necessity. There is another law higher than necessity: the law of power. The more conscious you become, the more you go out of necessity, you transcend necessity, you start living out of power, out of abundant power. Then your life is not of necessity.

For example: a person speaks out of necessity because he cannot resist the temptation to speak. Buddhas also speak, but with no necessity: it is out of power, out of abundant power They are silent; there is no temptation, no obsession to speak. They can remain silent for ever. But still they speak. If they speak, they speak out of power.

You love out of necessity. Buddhas also love -- they love out of...so much energy is there that it has to be shared. So much power is happening, it has to be given. You live out of necessity, they live out of power.

Buddhas are the greatest luxury in existence.

These two laws are rooted in one primordial law. They are part of one law, two aspects of one law. In China that law is called tao, in India that law is called dhamma, in Greece that law is called logos, Jews have called it torah. It is the same law.

The whole existence is based in one law, but that law has two aspects. One aspect for those who are unconscious -- they live like slaves, robots. And another aspect of freedom, of power, of immense joy -- that aspect happens only when you are awakened, enlightened. And to have these two laws harmoniously adjusted in your life is the basic message of Pythagoras.

When these two laws are in harmony, you are in harmony. When these two laws are in harmony, then your body follows the law of necessity and your soul follows the law of power. Then your mind follows the law of necessity, and your heart follows the law of power. Then you are a meeting of the sky and the earth, body and soul, the visible and the invisible. And that's what Buddhahood is, that's what enlightenment is.

OSHO,
Goethe once wrote in his Goetz von Berlichingen:
"Poverty, chastity and obedience -- unbearable are they all."
What do you think about his statement?
Would you please comment?

It is absolutely correct. These are the three calamities that have ruined the very being of humanity.

Obedience means, in other words, slavery. We are very clever to use good words for ugly realities. I do not teach you disobedience; this has to be understood clearly. Obedience is ugly, and the human mind moves like a pendulum of a clock -- it immediately goes to the opposite. Then it starts making disobedience the law of life.

Disobedience is only reaction. If there is no obedience imposed on you, disobedience will disappear automatically because there is nothing to disobey.

So I have to make it clear to you that I hate obedience, but in that obedience disobedience is included, because they are part of one reality.

I teach intelligence.

Obedience keeps you retarded. You have just to follow; you are not to doubt, you are not to question, you have just to be a robot. Naturally, sooner or later, particularly younger people start feeling that all this obedience is nothing but a strategy to impose slavery. They react, and move to the other extreme. Whatever is said, don't do it -- that becomes their religion. In both the ways they remain retarded.

My struggle is against the retardedness of human mind. I want you to be intelligent, to decide for yourself.

I can explain something to you. I can put all my cards open before you. Now it is up to you to decide what to do. Action is going to be your decision. Explanation can be done by your parents, by your teachers, by the society, but explanation is not an order to act. They are simply making you aware of the whole situation. Making you aware of the whole situation makes you intelligent; you become more alert, you start seeing things which you were not seeing before. You become aware of new directions, new dimensions, new ways of looking at things.

But there is no order that you have to act according to the explanation given to you. Action has to come from your own intelligence, from your own understanding. It will not be obedience, it will not be disobedience.

Sometimes you may feel it perfectly right to do something, but that is your decision. Sometimes you may feel it is not right to do something; that too is your decision. The more decisions you are allowed to take, the more your intelligence is sharpened.

Obedience takes away the very base of growth, it simply orders you.

You can see it happening in the army: the very psychology of obedience in its complete picture. The soldiers are for years trained for absolutely meaningless things... Turn to the left... there is no reason. Turn to the right... there is no reason. Go backwards, come forwards... there is no reason. For hours... It is an exercise in destroying their intelligence.

I have heard of a professor in the second world war. When everybody was needed for the army, he was also recruited. And he was stating continuously, "You don't understand. I am a professor of philosophy. I will not be able to become a soldier because I cannot even take a single step without deciding why."

But nobody listened to him, and the first day on the parade ground when the commander ordered "Turn to the left," everybody turned except the professor.

The commander was informed beforehand, "He is a little eccentric; he is a professor of philosophy, so be patient with him." He didn't say anything.

Then the people were ordered to turn to the right, go backwards, come forwards, but the professor remained in his position. When everybody had come back to the same position, the commander asked the professor, "Why were you not following the orders?"

He said, "It is so stupid... because if finally everybody has to come to this stage where I am already standing, then what was all that, 'Come back, go forward, go right, go left'? If this was going to be the final order, then I am already there. What more do you want? And I want to ask, Why have these people been turned like machines?" -- it was impossible!

There is no why; it is a strategy to destroy intelligence. When a person just follows orders for years, morning and evening, he forgets completely that he has his own decisiveness. The order becomes his decision.

The commander reported to the higher authorities, "That man is impossible, he argues."

In the army no argument is allowed. They said, "You give him some small job in the mess, where there is no question of ordering."

So he was brought into the mess, given a pile of peas... And he was told, "Within one hour you have to sort out the bigger peas on one side and the smaller peas on the other side."

He listened. After one hour, when the commander came, he was sitting silently and the pile was also sitting silently exactly as it was left. The commander said, "Now what is the problem?"

He said, "The problem is this: unless I figure out everything beforehand in detail, I never move. There are peas which are big, there are peas which are small, but there are peas which are in the middle. Where am I put to the peas which are in the middle? Rather than doing something wrong, it is better not to do anything. And this hour was beautiful. I meditated, the peas meditated, and everything was silent. No left turn, right turn... I love this job." And he had not done anything.

The whole structure of armies around the world is made in such a way that in three or four years they destroy your intelligence completely, you become almost a mechanical robot. The moment you hear the order, "March!" you simply march; no question arises within you.

After the first world war, a man was retired. He had been awarded great prizes for his bravery. Two persons sitting in a restaurant watched the man carrying a bucket full of eggs on his head, and just to play a joke, one of them shouted, "Attention!"

In the middle of the street, the man stood in the position of attention and the eggs fell all over the street. He was very angry. He said, "This is not right. Now who is going to pay for my eggs?"

Those people said, "We have done nothing. There is no prohibition on using the word 'attention.' We have not told you to obey it."

The man said, "You don't understand. I have been thirty years in the army. I have completely forgotten how to make any decision on my own -- attention means simply attention. Although I am retired, the habit of thirty years of simply being obedient has become my second nature. I am a poor man. You should not have done this."

Obedience is basically used by religions, politicians, educationalists, parents.

They are all destroying your intelligence, and they are making a great value of obedience. It is a disease far more dangerous than any cancer, because cancer can be cured, can be operated on. But once you get caught into the net of obedience, there is no cure for you.

God was angry with Eve and Adam because they disobeyed; that was their only sin. Obedience is virtue. And the disobedience of Adam and Eve was so great that even now every Christian is born in sin, because your original forefathers -- Adam and Eve -- sinned against God. Obedience seems to be the very base of all your religions. In different ways they support it: belief, faith, no questioning, simply following The Holy Bible....

You are not taken into account at all. You are just a slave.

Certainly obedience makes you more efficient. That's why everybody wants you to be obedient -- your father, your mother, everybody wants you to be obedient.

In my childhood it was an everyday problem. I had made it clear to my parents, "If you want me to do something, please explain to me why and let me decide. If you don't want me to do it, then you can order me to do it. I would rather die than follow your order."

In my village we had a beautiful river. In summer it was not so big, but in the rainy season it became huge. I was a constant lover of the river, and if they could not find me anywhere else they searched for me near the river, and they always found me there.

My father told me, "Remember one thing: when the river is flooded with rainwater, it is a mountainous river, do not try to cross it."

I said, "Now it is absolutely impossible for me to resist the temptation. I will cross it."

He said, "You will die. You will not be able to cross such a strong mountainous current."

I said, "It will be a glorious death, but I am going to cross it."

The whole village gathered when I crossed the river. I was only twelve years of age. Nobody had done it before, it looked so dangerous. It took me almost six miles downstream to reach the other shore, and many times I felt that it was going to be impossible. But I crossed it.

Later on my father said to me, "Can't you understand anything?"

I said, "That's what I am trying to do, but you don't let me understand."

I had made it clear to the whole family, "Don't order; otherwise I am not going to obey. You are making me disobedient. The whole crime will be on your heads. I simply want to have explanations and to be left at liberty to decide for myself. You should have explained to me the whole situation of the river, how dangerous it can be, and that is all; then it would have been my decision to do it or not to do it.

"But it has to be my decision, not anybody else's. I understand your intention is good, but the way you are trying to impose your intention is very dangerous. Rather than seeing the death of my intelligence I would like to die myself, because what is the point of living like a robot?"

So Goethe is correct: obedience is one of the greatest sins. All the religions have perpetuated it, and all the generations have perpetuated it.

He is absolutely right when he says about chastity that it is unbearable.
It is not only unbearable -- he is not being absolutely correct -- it is impossible.

Chastity is against nature, and in anything against nature you are going to be a loser. You can be victorious with nature; against it, your defeat is sure and certain.

But that's what for centuries we have been told, to be chaste -- and at a time when it is naturally and absolutely impossible. But all the societies prolong.... There is education, the university....

The scientific fact is that between fourteen and twenty-one, somewhere near eighteen and a half, the boy comes to the very highest peak of sexual energy, which he will never attain again. And the same is true with the girl: somewhere near seventeen and a half she comes to the greatest peak of attaining orgasmic experience.

The whole of humanity has been deprived of orgasmic experience. By the time somebody returns from the university he is twenty-five, and if he goes back there for a Ph.D. then he is twenty-seven or twenty-eight. His peak of sexual energy is gone... down the drain! And now he gets married. Both are declining, and now they are no longer capable of having that vigor, that natural force which could have produced the orgasmic experience -- which is one of the foundations of religious experience.

A person who has known orgasmic blissfulness, only for a few moments, has touched the boundary line that divides ordinary life from the divine life.

And with the orgasmic experience the desire naturally arises, "Is it all or is there much more?" The experience is so tremendously thrilling that one wants to have something more, something better, something more refined. The first person who became religious must have become religious only because of orgasmic experience -- because there is no other experience which can give you an insight into religion.

Millions of people on the earth live their whole lives without the orgasmic experience. You want these people to pray in churches, in the temples, in mosques? You have destroyed the very energy in them which would have taken them to the beyond without any priest.

In the orgasmic experience a few things become very clear to the person.

One, mind stops...for a few seconds there are no thoughts. Time stops...for a few moments there is no past, no future, but only the present. Of course the experience is very fleeting and very momentary. And the only drawback in it is that it depends on the other person; it happens between two persons -- a man and a woman who are deep in love, who want to merge into each other so totally that they are not two entities but one organic whole.

It is a very simple, intelligent understanding that if we can stop thinking and stop time, perhaps the same experience will happen without the other partner. And that's how the whole spiritual phenomenon developed. People tried; they succeeded.

Mind stops and time stops -- simultaneously.

Mind and time are not two different things.

Reality is only in the present; past and future are part of the mind.

The present is the stoppage of time. When there are no thoughts, how can you think of the past and how can you think of the future? There is no way to think about the present, you are already in it. There is no need to think about it, you are experiencing it.

People tried, explorers of the interior world -- we don't know their names, who were the first explorers of the greatest discovery in human existence, who tried and succeeded in stopping time and mind -- and they were surprised that when there is not the other, then this state of orgasmic blissfulness can last as long as you want. It is no longer physiology; it is no longer biology; it is no longer genetics -- you have come beyond. It can spread over all your twenty-four hours. Slowly, slowly you will start living in it.

You don't have to produce it; it becomes just like breathing -- you don't even have to think about it. This state of your consciousness is the greatest experience that life makes available to you. But before it becomes available you should have some taste, some experience that helps you to go in search for the ultimate. This is the ultimate state.

Enlightenment is nothing but an orgasmic state which has become natural to you, just like the heartbeat.

And then there are many discoveries which happen in this state. In this state it was discovered that each man is both a man and a woman, and each woman is both a man and a woman. In the contemporary world Carl Gustav Jung was the first to come across it. He thought he had discovered something great -- it is something great, but it is not his discovery. In the East for at least ten thousand years we have known the fact: there are scriptures...there were statues made in which one half is male and the other half is female.

When you are in an orgasmic state, you discover for the first time that no outside woman is needed, no outside man is needed; your own inner woman is meeting with your inner man. And because both are inside you, the meeting can last forever.

Only this kind of man transcends sex.

Repression is not chastity; repression is not celibacy. Repression is perversion.

Using sex at the right moment, when it is at its peak... We are prohibiting our children from having anything to do with sex at the time when they are at the highest peak to which they will never attain again. Now it will be completely going down and down the hill... And when your energies are shrinking, orgasmic experience becomes more and more difficult, almost impossible.

Goethe is absolutely right.

Poverty is the third thing he says is unbearable.

It is unbearable, but religions have made it bearable. They function as opium -- opium can make anything bearable.

In India I have seen this happen. Poor women have to go to work; only the husband's earnings are not enough to keep them alive. But they have children, small children, and nobody wants a woman bringing the child to work. If a road is being made, the woman will have to go a dozen times to the child to feed him, to take care of him, and the child will throw tantrums and will cry and weep and the woman will have to go to calm him down. This is a disturbance, so they have found a trick.

All these poor women give a little opium to the child when they go to work. Then hungry, in the hot sun, he does not make any trouble; he simply lies down by the side of the road. I have seen hundreds of children lying by the side of the road and the women are working. I was puzzled in the beginning, why these children are so patient. Then I was made aware that they had been given opium.

All the religions have been doing the same to make poverty bearable. The opium is very subtle. First, they all teach that whatever state you are in -- in the East it is because of your past life, and if you don't make any trouble, if you don't make any revolt against your present state, in the future life you will enjoy all the riches possible.

Now, this is psychological opium. Those people are waiting for a future life to have all the pleasures, and somehow carrying their poverty -- which is unbearable.

In the West, where past life and future life are not part of the mythologies, they have other consolations. Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God." What is this? -- simple opium. To call the poor blessed... And to console them he says, "A camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot enter into paradise." So the poor man is in a better condition than the rich man. It is only a question of a few years -- because there is only one life in Christianity, in Judaism, in Mohammedanism.

This is a test of your trust: if you trust in God, if you trust in Jesus Christ, you will go through this very easily. And the whole paradise for eternity is specially made for you; all rich men will be thrown into hell. It gives great consolation. One starts thinking, "That's perfect. We may be for seventy years poor, but these rich people are going to suffer for eternity and we are going to enjoy all the pleasures for eternity. It is not a bad bargain."

If these religions were not giving people such poisonous ideas, the world would have destroyed poverty long, long ago. Man is capable of reaching to the moon, and he cannot destroy poverty. He is capable of creating nuclear weapons which can destroy the earth seven hundred times, and he's not capable of destroying poverty. It's simply illogical, absurd.

Poverty can be destroyed, but nobody wants to destroy it.

Religions want to keep it, because otherwise all the blessed people of the earth will disappear and there will only be cursed people enjoying. That will be unbearable for the bishops and the cardinals and the pope -- the cursed people are enjoying everything and all the blessed people have disappeared. And these blessed people who have disappeared -- these blessed people are the people who come to the church; these blessed people are the people who support all kinds of idiots who pretend to be mediators between them and God.

Yesterday the local bishop has declared that he is going to take a protest march into the town against me. I was really excited, so I said, "That is great."

But nothing happened. I sent a few sannyasins to enquire what is the matter, what happened to the protest. The protest did not happen because nobody gathered there, only a few old women who go to the church. Who goes to the church otherwise? -- only old women who have nowhere to go, old women who are not wanted anywhere go to the church.

They gathered, but the bishop must have thought it will look foolish to have a protest with a dozen old women; it will be a protest against Christianity, not against me. So hiding somewhere in a small room.... We tried to find out where they were meeting, but we could not.

Then he gave a declaration to the newspapers that "the concerned people had a secret meeting." And who are these concerned people? -- the old women. I loved the words "concerned people."

All these religions are living on poverty.

The poor go there because they are suffering; it is unbearable, they need some kind of consolation. The rich don't go there; they are not suffering. And if they are in a certain anguish, these priests are not capable of helping them. The rich people, feeling frustrated, have to search for somebody who can help them out of their anguish. They don't want opium.

The politicians don't want everybody to become rich, because it is more difficult to enslave rich people than poor. It is easier to purchase the votes of the poor than to convince the rich people to vote for them. The richer a person becomes, the more out of hand he is as far as politicians are concerned. A richer person, if he has any psychological problem, will go to a psychoanalyst, not to a priest. He will go to the East to find some meditator to help him realize himself so that he can go beyond the mind, but he will not go to these ordinary priests who don't know anything.

Amrito has told me about another priest, a bishop, who lives far away from here. She has heard that he is a very revolutionary man, a very intelligent man. He was so intelligent and revolutionary that he was sent to Germany for ten years. The people of this island asked him back and forced the church to give their priest back. Now he is back.

She was thinking that he is the man who will be able to understand me, so she went, wasted her whole day. The priest may have been intelligent and may have looked revolutionary, but he seems to be a coward because he said, "I am perfectly willing to come and meet Osho, but not on the island. He has been here just two days and things are boiling up, and it is too hot. I don't want to take this danger. If Osho comes to Athens, then I can come and meet him secretly there."

These are your religious leaders. And this man was thought to be a revolutionary; the church had to send him away for ten years.

And I don't think that anything is boiling here. I don't see any problem arising here. It is as peaceful here as it will be anywhere on the whole island.

Goethe is right, but nobody has criticized him for the simple reason that he does not elaborate. He simply says, "Chastity, obedience, poverty are unbearable" -- in a very mild tone, so nobody has criticized him. He is criticizing your whole church, your whole religion, your whole civilization. But he is being clever, he is not straightforward; he should have defined everything that he meant by it.

I have been told by many sympathetic people -- Indira Gandhi was prime minister of India; she told me, "If you say the same things without making them too elaborate and in a mild tone, nobody will take any objection. But you make everything so fiery...."

I said, "Then what will be the point? Why should I waste my time making mild, liberal statements if it does not create thinking in people? I am going to put more and more fire into my words."

She said, "I know you. Because of your words I want to come to see you at your commune. I cannot come; I am afraid of my voters, that there will be great trouble. Just coming to meet you in your commune I will lose many voters, many sympathizers."

This is from a very courageous woman. And from many sources people have been telling me, "Why don't you say things in such a way that nobody is hurt?" The point is not that nobody is hurt; if nobody is hurt then nobody wakes up.

I am ready to risk my life if I can wake people.

Those three words he has chosen are perfectly right. Goethe was a man of insight, tremendous insight, but not courageous. So that great statement has never been taken any note of by the people -- nobody has bothered about it. But now that I have explained what he really means, you can understand that there are many people in the world who have said right things, but in such a lousy way that they don't make any impact.

Humanity needs people who are real fire and who can make them aflame. Certainly many enemies will be created, but that does not count. What counts is the friends. Do you know how many enemies Gautam Buddha created? -- you cannot name even a few of them. They disappeared, but his friends took over the whole of Asia. How many enemies did Jesus create? -- almost the whole of the Jewish community. But where are the enemies? What is their position? What is their situation? Christianity has become the greatest religion in the world, and Jesus had very few friends. To begin with, he had only twelve disciples, a few sympathizers.

I am far more fortunate. I have millions of friends. I don't care about the enemies because enemies disappear; they don't make any impact on history.

The impact that is made, is made by friends. The friends of truth are the people who revolutionize, who change human beings for the better.

The second question:

OSHO,
Can you say something about the psychology of the inferiority complex, which in your understanding all politicians have. How can this dangerous disease be treated?

The disease is not only dangerous, the disease is as ancient as man. The disease comes from the idea of comparison.

We are always comparing; from our very childhood we are taught comparison. Somebody else's child is more cute, more beautiful, more intelligent; somebody else's child is more obedient, and you are not....

All educational systems depend on comparison: somebody comes first, and somebody is the last in the class; somebody passes, somebody fails. Teachers appreciate students who are obedient; they hate the students, they punish the students who are not obedient in every way.

The whole structure of society is continuously comparing, and the very idea of comparison is absolutely false.

Each individual is unique because there is nobody else like him. Comparison would have been right if all individuals were alike; they are not. Even twins are not absolutely alike; it is impossible to find another man who is exactly like you. So we are comparing unique people -- which creates the whole trouble.

When I entered my high school, I came first in the class. Somebody came thirtieth, and he was crying. I went to him and said, "You need not cry, and if you are crying I will sit by your side and start crying."

He said, "But why should you cry? You have come first."

I said, "This is all nonsense. It is only a question of seeing from where you are seeing: on that side I am first; on this side you are first, nobody could beat you. I can be defeated, but you cannot be defeated."

He started laughing at the idea that from the other end of the line he is also first; in fact, I am thirtieth from the other side.

In my vision, in schools there should be no examinations, so nobody comes first and nobody comes second, nobody passes and nobody fails. In schools there should be merits given every day by every teacher in different subjects to each student. And based on all those merits it should be decided when a child is ready to move into another class. Some child may be ready within two months; there is no need for him to wait one year. Some child may move after eight months, some child may move after twelve months, some child may take fifteen months. But nobody is higher than the other; everybody is moving according to his pace, according to his interest.

Everybody has some uniqueness.

Education should be organized in such a way that that uniqueness comes over, becomes an actuality.

There should be no hierarchy in the world.

A plumber should be as respected as a great physicist. In fact, before dying, Albert Einstein said, "If there is another life I would like to be born as a plumber, not as a physicist again. Enough is enough." If Albert Einstein is desiring to be born as a plumber, that is beautiful; the very idea is beautiful. The plumber should be as respected and dignified as the professor. These are professions. You should not value the individual by profession; the individual is invaluable. Hierarchy would drop from society if no profession were bigger and greater and higher than other professions; then comparison would start disappearing.

In schools comparison should start disappearing.

There is no need for every child to read geography or history unless he loves it. The choice of the subjects should be his love. Every school, every university, every college should devote at least two months in the beginning of the year for students to move into all other subjects, to listen to teachers of different subjects, and find out for themselves what is their love, what triggers their heart and their intelligence.

Right now the situation is such that a person who could have been a good butcher has become a surgeon. Now there is going to be a difficulty. He should be a butcher, but the butcher should not be in any way lower than the surgeon. Society should be made of unique people, bringing out their talents as fully as possible. Education should help it, the parents should help it, everybody around should help every child to bring out his talents. But right now that is not the situation; everybody is being ordered.

My parents wanted me to become an engineer or a doctor. I simply refused. I said, "I am going to study philosophy because I have to fight philosophers all my life."

They said, "What nonsense. If you want to fight philosophers why should you waste six years in studying philosophy?"

I said, "Without studying philosophy I cannot fight rightly. I have to study philosophy. I enjoy the way philosophy argues, and I want to go into the very deepest arguments all the philosophies have produced. But I am going to fight against it, because my experience is that not a single philosopher has ever become enlightened. They were just playing with words, gymnastics of logic; they never reached above their minds. They did a great job with their minds, but they remained minds."

My parents threatened me, "If you choose philosophy then remember we are not going to support you financially."

I said, "That you need not say. I was not going to accept it anyway, because when I choose my subject then I will find my way. I am not choosing your subject; naturally you are out of the question. Why should I ask your financial support? Even if you give it, I will reject it."

They were shocked. They could not believe how I would manage -- but I managed. In the night I was editing a newspaper, and in the morning I was going to the college. And in between, whenever I could find time, I would go to sleep.

Finally they started feeling guilty. My father went on writing to me, "Forgive us and accept."

I went on returning their money orders, and one day he himself came and he said, "Can't you forget, can't you forgive?"

I said, "I can forgive but I cannot forget, because you were forcing me into something just because of finances, just because of money" -- money was more important to them. "You thought more of money than you thought of me, and you threatened me. I had not asked for money. You can keep your money. I am managing perfectly well."

In fact, things turned out so beautifully, because the work in the newspaper was negligible. You have just to invent events that don't happen, things that nobody has said. My chief editor called me and said, "Since you have come our circulation has increased. But a few letters have started coming saying, 'Where are these things happening? Who is saying these things?'"

I said, "Don't you worry. You worry about your circulation. I don't have time to go out and look and report; I simply sit here and finish the whole work. I don't want to waste my whole night. In two, three hours I invent things I put in the paper. Your circulation is growing. You should look to your circulation. And any letters that come, you simply redirect them to me. I will answer them."

I worked well with the journalist. It worked well in the college too, because I was expelled from the college. The professor was ready to resign. He said, "Either he can be in the college or I can be in the college."

I told him, "Before you do it, just let us meet the principal."

The principal said to me, "He is our oldest professor, very respected, and we don't want to lose him. We know that you are right" -- because he was teaching philosophy and he was teaching as if he was simply giving commandments. We had just to memorize whatever he said and reproduce it in the examination papers.

I was arguing. I said, "If this man is not capable of arguing, he should simply say, 'I don't know,' and I will not harass him. But he is not courageous enough to say even that."

The principal told me, "I understand the whole thing. I cannot force you to leave, but you be kind enough and do one thing: leave the college. I will phone another principal of another college to admit you."

I said, "I don't want to disturb anybody." I went to the other college.

The other principal said, "My condition is that you will join this college but you should never attend any class, because whatever reports I have heard.... I don't want to disturb my professors."

I said, "That's absolutely great. That's what I wanted. What about my percentage for being present?"

He said, "That I will take care of. You will score ninety-percent attendance."

I said, "That's perfectly okay. That's what I wanted. Now I am completely free."

So two or three hours in the newspaper, and then the whole day I was free to go into the library and to read as much and as deeply as possible.

I have never felt at any point in my life that existence disappoints you if you are honest, sincere. It always helps you; it is immensely compassionate.

This whole system of hierarchy can be dissolved, and only then will the inferiority complex dissolve.

That is only a symptom.

Everybody feels inferior -- I say everybody, without exception -- in some way or other. Somebody is more beautiful than you, somebody is more healthy than you, somebody is more educated than you, somebody is in a higher post than you, somebody has a more beautiful wife than you. Life is such a complex thing, and there are so many things in life that if you start comparing, nobody, not even a man like Napoleon Bonaparte....

You would think Napoleon should not feel inferior: he is one of the biggest heroes of our mad, so-called history. But he felt very inferior because he was not very tall; he was only five feet five inches. And that was such a wound -- that his soldiers were taller, his bodyguards were taller.

One day he was fixing a picture in his room, and his bodyguard said, "Sir, you wait. I can do it, I am higher than you."

He said, "Take that word back. Say you are taller than me, not higher." He was so touchy about that point.

But I don't see any problem: whether you are six feet, seven feet, five feet, anyway your feet reach to the earth -- that's the whole purpose. It is not that when you are five feet you are hanging two feet above and everybody laughs at you. The whole thing is that your feet reach to the earth, you can walk. What does it matter? Have you noticed that nobody wants to marry a woman who is taller than him? -- for that simple reason.

I had a friend who was in love with a woman, but the trouble was that she was really tall, almost one foot taller than the man. He said, "Being in love is one thing, but she is insisting on marriage, my parents are insisting on marriage. And I am afraid that wherever I go with her I will look like a fool.

"People already ask us when we go somewhere...they ask her, not me, 'Is he your younger brother?' I'm worried about my old age: when she becomes older perhaps they may start asking, 'Is he your eldest son?' It is so embarrassing -- and nobody asks me, everybody asks her, because she's taller and bigger, and I am smaller and thinner."

It is sheer stupidity. On small counts we are continuously comparing.

I told him, "Always carry a small stool with you."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Carry a small stool, always stand on the stool. Then everybody will ask you what the problem is, nobody will ask your wife. And then you can say, 'I am the husband; that is the problem. She is my wife. Let me introduce you to her.' It is just a simple thing. Make a plastic stool, not weighing much, and carry it everywhere. Enjoy the whole game."

People who are on high posts are still in the same jam with something or other.

It is said of a great king in India, Poras, who fought with Alexander, that he was going on his chariot for a morning drive into the forest. Suddenly, he saw a beautiful girl carrying water from a well. He stopped the chariot, he stepped down, and he went to see the girl.

When he came back to the chariot he was surprised: the charioteer was kissing his wife who was also in the chariot. He was very angry, but the wife said, "If you can go to some other woman seeing that she is beautiful, I know that this man is far more beautiful than you, far stronger than you, so what is the problem? If you are the king and I am also the queen, why get jealous? I was not jealous. I really felt relieved when you went away. That was a good opportunity to have a little affair with the charioteer."

Since that day it is said Poras never looked at any other woman. But that must have been a really great repression; he was a lover of women, but he was afraid of what his wife had said.

Everybody feels inferior in some way or other, and the reason is that we don't accept that everybody is unique. There is no question of inferiority or superiority. Everybody is just one of his kind, so comparison does not arise.

The politicians are the worst sufferers from inferiority complex.

They want to prove to the world that they are great, they have power over millions -- they are presidents, prime ministers. But if you look at their lives, that inferiority complex has not left them, it is still there.

India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru was also five feet five inches, and when he took the oath for the prime ministership, and the transfer of the government from British hands back to Indian hands, Mountbatten was the British viceroy. He was a tall man.... If you look in books you can find the picture: Jawaharlal is standing -- exactly on my suggestion although I had not given the suggestion to him -- on a step, and Mountbatten is standing on the floor, so they look alike, the same height.

But you will be surprised that Mountbatten's wife fell in love with Jawaharlal. Mountbatten was such a beautiful man that he was sent to Burma, from England -- he was from the royal family -- just because he was such a playboy. He was creating too many scandals, and a royal family does not do that -- particularly the British royal family, it is too orthodox! They sent him far away to Burma saying, "Do anything that you want to do there." He was a beautiful man, but his wife fell in love with Jawaharlal. Jawaharlal was also a beautiful man, but not so royal. She was writing such love letters as teenagers write.

The strange thing was that after that many women in India wanted to marry him. His wife had died long ago, and he had only one child, Indira. There were a few women that I know personally who remained unmarried for their whole lives just because they had decided they would marry Jawaharlal; otherwise they would not marry.

Mountbatten's wife was not beautiful at all; in fact she was not even homely. She had a certain disease over her skin. Her skin was what you would call leatherlike; it was so ugly, disgusting. But perhaps because she was British and she was the wife of the viceroy, that gave some superiority to Jawaharlal's inferiority complex.

The women who remained their whole life unmarried -- two of them I know -- were really beauties, of great heart. But Jawaharlal refused, and he fell into the hands of this leathery woman -- whom I cannot see anybody could think was beautiful, and not even a blind man would find that she was.

But this is how things go on working. And for centuries we have been creating the disease; we have not allowed people to accept themselves as they are.

The moment you accept yourself as you are, without any comparison,
all inferiority, all superiority disappears.

I don't feel any inferiority, any superiority.

I am simply myself.

Why should I compare with anybody else?

Existence wanted me to be just the way I am. Existence wants you to be just as you are. You are fulfilling some empty space in existence; without you there will be something missing.

Hence, one of my basic teachings is total acceptance of yourself without any conditions. In the total acceptance of yourself you will be free from these complexes -- inferiority, superiority; otherwise you will suffer for your whole life.

We are in a situation where we cannot have everything; nobody can. So there will always be something you don't have and that will give you the feeling of being inferior: "Somebody else has it...." And I cannot conceive of a person who can have everything in this world. People have tried, and failed utterly.

You know the ancient parable of King Midas. He prayed to God; his only wish was that whatever he touched became gold. His wish was fulfilled, and he was immensely happy. He thought he had found it. Now there was no way for him to feel inferior: nobody has that quality that he has; he is the superior-most in the whole existence, before and after.

But soon he found he was wrong. His friends started deserting him, even his wife and children would not come close to him. And he died because whatever he would touch would turn into gold. He could not eat anything -- you cannot eat gold; you cannot drink gold.

But it was too late. For years he had been praying and the wish was fulfilled; now there was no time to ask for years, "Take away this blessing which has turned out to be a curse."

Don't ask for anything. Whatever you have, existence is wiser than you think. It has given you everything that you need. Just explore your own treasures and bring them to their fulfillment. Bring every potentiality to actuality.

Once this disease disappears, politics will disappear automatically. Politics is an outcome of inferiority complex. People want power to prove to themselves and to others that they are not just nobodies.

I teach you just to be yourself, and that's enough. You are accepted by the sun, you are accepted by the moon, you are accepted by the trees; you are accepted by the ocean, you are accepted by the earth... What more do you want?

YOU HAVE TALKED ABOUT THE SUPERIORITY/INFERIORITY DIALECTIC AS THE BASIS
OF AUTHORITARIAN AND FASCIST RELATIONSHIPS.

IT IS ONE OF THE MIRACLES OF
BEING WITH YOU THAT IN SPITE OF HAVING BEEN CONSTANTLY PERSUADED OF OUR
UNWORTHINESS BY OUR PARENTS, TEACHERS AND PRIESTS, YOU ARE ABLE TO SHED
LIGHT ON ALL OUR UNCONSCIOUS HABITS WITHOUT EVER MAKING US FEEL BAD ABOUT
IT. YOU ALLOW US TO BE AWARE OF OUR POTENTIAL FOR ENLIGHTENMENT IN A WAY
THAT DOES NOT MAKE US FEEL SUPERIOR, AND YET SIMULTANEOUSLY YOU NEVER
MAKE US FEEL INFERIOR BECAUSE WE ARE NOT ENLIGHTENED.

IN GROUPS, TOO, WHILE
YOU ARE PRESENT, WE CAN REVEAL OUR NOTIONS OF INFERIORITY BUT BECAUSE
YOU ARE THERE AND SIMPLY NOT PART OF THE EGOTISTIC INFERIORITY/SUPERIORITY
GAME, DEPENDENCY AND SPIRITUAL SLAVERY CANNOT HAPPEN. BUT WHAT HAPPENS IN
GROUPS WHERE YOU ARE ABSENT? SURELY, IF THE THERAPIST HAS A TRACE OF EGO,

THEN DOESN’T THIS KIND OF PSYCHOLOGICAL FASCISM INEVITABLY EMERGE?

Amrito, you have seen something so significant that everybody must be made aware of it.

There is only one possibility for sanity to exist in relationships so they don’t turn into inferiority and
superiority games, so they don’t become sado-masochistic tortures. And that only possibility is in
the presence of an unconditional love.

Love is the greatest alchemy.

It transforms base metals into gold. Your ingredients are the same – the murderer and the Gautam
Buddha are not different as far as their ingredients, their intrinsic potentialities are concerned. It is
just that man is not a one dimensional machine.

Man is not one-dimensional; otherwise, his whole world would be sheer boredom.

And man’s search is basically to be one with existence – separation hurts.
In our other loving relationships, in small measures we are searching for the same unity. In love with
a woman, in love with a man, in love with a friend, in love with some creative activity – dance, music,
poetry – we are trying to have a certain synchronicity with existence.

Our situation is that of a small child in the forest who has lost his mother and is searching in the
forest, not knowing where to go. This situation allows many exploiters... this helplessness is used
by those who are in power, by those who have money. The helplessness is used to convert you into
a slave, into dependence.

Hence, all the religions have developed particular programs. They begin with God – and with God,
your relationship cannot be anything else but that which exists between a puppet and a puppeteer,
between the slave and the owner. With God, you cannot expect more than that, because he is the
creator; he has made you – he can at any moment destroy you too. Neither did he ask you whether
you wanted to enter into life, nor will he ask you whether you are in favor of destroying the world.

All the gods of all the religions are dictatorial. They are fascist.

I don’t have any God; hence I don’t have any program for you in which you will be transformed slowly
into a slave.

I am fulfilled – nothing more can be added to my experience. That’s why the people who are with
me will not feel in any way inferior.

Nobody is inferior. People may be in different spaces, but nobody is inferior and nobody is superior.
They are all made of the same stuff you call God. How can somebody be superior and somebody
be inferior? We belong to the same existence, our roots are nourished by the same existence.
Existence makes no distinctions, no discriminations between the sinners and the saints.

My approach is existential.

Hence, nobody is superior and nobody is inferior here. Naturally, by destroying this complex of
inferiority and superiority, we are removing the very possibility of any kind of fascist mentality, fascist
personality – because to me, it is inconceivable that a fascist can ever be religious.

And your so-called religious people are more or less all fascist fanatics. They are not in search of
truth; they think they have found it already – in their scriptures which are dead, in the old superstitions
which even they know have no basis in reality.

Just a clarity of vision dispels all darkness out of which all the monsters are born.
Here with me, whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are white or black, it does not matter;
nobody even takes note of it. It is enough that you are a human being. And it is your freedom to
choose your own lifestyle; it is your basic right how you want to blossom. Those who love you can
help in taking care of the garden in which you are growing – watering your roots, showering their
warmth.

It has now been scientifically proved that even the plants know who are their friends and who are
their enemies. They have developed something like a cardiogram which is attached to the tree, and
if a man comes with the idea to cut a branch of the tree or to uproot the tree – he just has the idea
– suddenly the graph that is being made by the cardiogram on the tree starts trembling. It loses the
rhythm it had... now you can see how fear is felt by the tree.

And remember that the tree has telepathic sensitivity; otherwise she could not know the thought in
the man’s mind. He has not done anything – visibly, nothing has happened. And when the gardener
comes – with his warmth, with his love – suddenly the graph becomes the most harmonious. Now
the tree is no longer afraid, the tree is immensely blissful.

Loving warmth is not only a poetic phenomenon. It is a reality of great importance.
Now the flowers will be bigger, the fruits will be juicier; the tree will respond. Except for man, perhaps
there is no ingratitude in this whole existence. The tree cannot give anything more – she cannot give
money, she cannot give gold – but she can give beautiful flowers, as big as possible, to a loving
heart. She can give juicier fruits.

Love has never been thought of as food, but it is a very subtle kind of food. And now psychologists
have concluded that if a child gets everything necessary – all chemicals, all hormones, food,
exercise, fresh air, rest, everything that is necessary for life – still he will die in three to six months
unless there is someone to pour love. He will not feel that life is worth living without love; he will
simply shrink and die. And in thousands of labs around the world, many animals have died in these
experiments.

Ordinarily, it is understood that these experiments are being done on animals first and that unless we
have found safe principles we do not apply them to human beings – this has been the idea prevalent
in the masses. Even the medical professionals – doctors, physicians – also believe in it. But the
truth is something very different.

Just a few days ago.... For almost two years, a group of senators in America were investigating
about a certain amount of money... not a small amount of money; two hundred million dollars is
there in the books, but where has it been spent, where has it gone? The cabinet went on denying
any knowledge of it, the president went on denying. The suspicion was that the government of
America today is the greatest terrorist. And the money is going to the terrorists in a small country in
the middle portion of the Americas, between South America and North America.

Just like Cuba, another small country has become communist. It is their right, whether they are right
or wrong. Nobody else has to decide it. If they want to live a wrong kind of life, then too, they have
the absolute freedom to live it; only they should not harm anybody else. They should not interfere in
the lives of others.

Two hundred million dollars had been given to guerrillas, terrorists, to destroy that small Central
American country because it had gone into the hands of the communists. And after two years of
continuous struggle, only now has the president accepted that, ”Yes, that money has gone to the
terrorists.”

And the whole world is silent, nobody has criticized it!
Governments are to save people from terrorism, and here governments are supplying money and
arms and food to terrorists. And then they go on lying....

I have looked into the scriptures of all the religions, I have looked into the ideological literature of all
the political parties and I am amazed: they go on piling up lies upon lies. And the whole of humanity
is asleep – not only does nobody object, but nobody even suspects.
Here with me, you are gathered for a special purpose: the search for the truth, the search for the
purest kind of love, the search for a life which is a dance of sheer joy.
Nowhere else in the world are people gathering for the same reasons. They are gathering for the
purpose of creating more hatred; they are gathering to create more wars; they are gathering to
create more destructive activities in human life. Naturally, we have a sick world, an insane world.

Here, it is impossible to feel any superiority or inferiority.
I have tried my best to convince you of only one thing: that enlightenment is your nature; that it is
not something achieved, you bring it with your birth. All that you have to do is not to create it but just
to open the hidden secret of your life.

The moment you start feeling your inner light, your whole perspective starts changing. You will
feel compassionate towards human beings even if they are doing stupid things. And you will feel
immensely joyous, celebrating, even though you don’t have anything to celebrate. Nothing is needed
to celebrate – only excuses... my birthday is just an excuse! But if you want to celebrate, you will
find a thousand and one excuses.

It is your life, and whatever becomes of it is your creation.
Remember, there are hidden signatures on it. You cannot disassociate yourself from what you
create, from the way you live, the way you respond.
Once you are overflowing with love and blissfulness, you cannot, even in your dreams, act in a way
which is humiliating to another. Because the other is not really the other, it is just part of us.

We are one consciousness filling the whole universe.
But a little experience will help... and you will start seeing the same light in others. And to see light
within yourself and light within others is to live the whole year round surrounded with a festival of
lights.

In the outside world, there are people who want to dominate and there are people who want to be
dominated. The responsibility is not one-sided. There are people who want to be enslaved, because
slavery has one thing about it: it takes all responsibility away from you. Then the responsibility is of
your owner. You are just instrumental – whatever he says, you do, but you don’t feel any burden. So
most human beings deep down want to remain slaves.

Slavery in religion means you remain a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. And you are afraid
also, because your slavery is based only on beliefs. So everybody is trying to protect his flock from
coming in contact with others.

Just the other day I received a message from friends in Germany. The German parliament has
passed a resolution that I cannot enter Germany. Sannyasins are protesting it because it is
absolutely against the German constitution, against German law. There is not a single precedent!

Not only in Germany but all over the world, there is not a single incident prohibiting a man who has
never before entered your country. How can you judge that he is going to be dangerous?
So they asked five hundred world-famous, prominent intelligentsia from different fields – professors,
scientists, poets, painters, dancers, actors. Up to now they have received one hundred and fifty
letters of strong support, an absolute protest against the government.

They have also received a few letters which are in support of the government. A few points in those
letters were so hilarious that they have sent me those few points. One point was: One Protestant
high priest has supported the government because he thinks I am a Catholic, and Germany has to
be saved from the Catholic religion.

Such fear shows deep doubts. You are not certain about your Protestant theology; you are afraid
somebody may make punctures in the balloon of your faith.
Here with me, there is a religious fragrance but no religion as such. That gives you total freedom.
That makes you proud of yourself and grateful for all that existence has done for you.

Remember, pride is not ego.

Ego is something without content. For example, a man who cannot even draw a straight line thinks
himself a great painter – that is ego, there is no content. But if Picasso thinks he is a great painter,
that is simply a fact, and if he is proud of his genius there is nothing wrong in it. In fact, people
should be helped to find some pride in their individuality because that pride will make their eyes
shine, their faces luminous; that pride will make them unique individuals, with no more question of
inferiority and superiority.

And secondly, anybody who is proud is always grateful. Because the genius of Picasso or Yehudi
Menuhin is not their own; they are only vehicles. It is the beyond that comes through them – in music,
in dance, in painting, in scientific research, in poetry, in thousands of ways, but the real genius will
know it for sure, that it is coming from the beyond.

He is proud that he has been chosen, he is not proud in comparison to you. Ego is a comparison:
you are higher, you are superior, but there is comparison. You cannot be superior living alone in a
forest – superior to whom? You cannot even be inferior – inferior to whom?

The man of pride has a deep feeling of gratitude that existence has chosen him, although he is not
worthy. It is a strange phenomenon. The more worthy you are, the more you feel you are not worthy
enough. You have been given so much and you cannot do anything in return.

Here, there will be people with pride. I would like my sannyasins to be proud, even of the fact
that they are sannyasins, that they have been courageous enough to move against all orthodoxies,
traditions, conventions, all that is rotten, and come out into the fresh, into the young, into the new.

You are blessed.

But your blessedness will be full of gratitude.

That is the distinction to be remembered between ego and pride.

I destroy the ego and I create the pride. Ego is something like a cancer that simply eats you and
eats others. Pride, self-respect is a creative phenomenon. It fulfills your own potential and it also
shares with the world all the treasures that you have brought into the world.
So here the situation is totally different.

I would like it to be so in the whole world, but they are so afraid. Their fear that I can destroy their
morality, their religion, their past, is a clear-cut indication that they are already uprooted from the
past. They are just hoping against hope that somehow all this old garbage can be carried. Because
we have respected it as golden for centuries. Now, to suddenly drop it as garbage by the side of the
road hurts the ego, because it means the ego has been wrong for centuries.
A sannyasin needs the courage to drop the fear – because unless he drops the fear, the ego cannot
be dropped. And without dropping the ego, the whole load, the whole luggage, all rotten, has to be
carried.

Your whole energy is wasted in carrying the dead.

Just think of yourself carrying your father, your grandfather, your forefathers, all on your back and
going towards Marine Drive. Do you think you will ever reach Marine Drive? Because the people
lined up on your back is going to be endless; all your skyscrapers will look like pygmies. The load
is going to be so tremendous that you will not be able to carry it without the help of Suraj Prakash
– you will need trucks, transport vehicles. And your whole life will be simply wasted carrying these
dead people.

And we are all carrying them. That’s why life becomes serious, burdensome, heavy, juiceless, dry.

Otherwise, there is no reason. You can be lush green with red flowers.
And there is no need for any comparison. Why not have all the people of the planet be emperors?

What is the problem? It is a question of understanding the world – and if you understand yourself,
to understand the world is not difficult, it is the simplest thing.
And once you have understood that to be an emperor or to be a slave is your decision, who is going
to choose to be a slave? When you can put your whole energy into creating something that will give
you satisfaction, that will give you a deep sense of fulfillment, a sense that you have not been here
unnecessarily, you have contributed something; you have made the world a little more beautiful – a
few more flowers you have added to it.

If everybody is adding a few more flowers, this whole world can again become a garden.
There is no need to fight. There is no need for you to be superior to anybody, because I am giving
you something which is far higher than superiority.

I am making you unique individuals.

SERMONS IN STONES, CH. 12, OSHO

heartbeatsalute

29-04-2012, 10:05 PM

http://www.oshoworld.com/osho_talk/talks/sermon29.asp
Meritocracy, On Basic Human Rights for the New Man

SOUL, DARK NIGHT When the mind starts disappearing
there comes a gap, an interval. Before something beyond
the mind descends, there is a gap. The old is gone and the
new has not come, hence the desert-like feeling.

The Christian mystics have the right name for it—they call
it "the dark night of the soul". One feels completely dried
up, empty—and negatively empty. The emptiness has the
quality of darkness, not of luminosity—no greenery anywhere,
not even an oasis, not even on the faraway horizon.
This desert has to be passed through.

Many people become afraid and they escape back into
their world of illusions. This is a natural outcome, because
all the greenery that has existed before was illusory, was just
hallucinatory. You created it—it was not there.

Now the dreams have disappeared, and the empty
screen ... You have been sitting in a movie house, and on
the empty screen there have been many many things—
beautiful flowers and mountains and rivers and the ocean
and people and everything was populated—and suddenly
the projector has stopped: the screen is empty.

It is empty because whatsoever you were seeing just a moment
before was just illusory ... it was maya. Many people
become afraid and they start the projector again—again they
populate the world with their own fantasies.

This is the time when courage is needed. This is the time
when a person really becomes a sannyasin. So let this desert
be. You have to pass through it, and the deeper your acceptance
the sooner it will disappear. Sometimes it can disappear
in a single moment, it depends on the intensity of the
acceptance.

It you accept, you say, "It is okay. I will live with the empty
screen but I am not going to create any illusion any more.
All those love affairs, relationships, all those desires and
greeds and all ambitions—I am not going to bring them
again. If it is desert, so let it be; I am ready to live with this
desert."

Once you are totally ready, suddenly you will see that the
desert is also disappearing. Just as the greenery has disappeared,
the desert is also disappearing. The pictures disappeared,
now the screen has disappeared, and then for the
first time you become aware of the reality—which is tremendously
beautiful. It is very colorful . . . it is luminous.

So these are the two things: first the movie has to start,
then the screen has to disappear. Then you face the reality,
the real world as it is. But to become capable of that, this
is the price one has to pay.

Christian mystics have said that there are three stages of
inner growth. The first they call via purgativa. One has to
become completely pure, pure of all illusions—that is
purgation.

The second stage they call via illuminativa. When one has
become completely pure of illusions, the second stage will
come—a great light will descend. Life will become glorious.
One will feel very very fulfilled, very close to home.
And then the third stage they call via unitiva. One becomes
one with the reality. There there is no-one as the seer and
nothing as the seen.

In the first stage there is no light and it is very painful—
purgation. Many many cherished dreams are being broken.
It is painful, it hurts, and one feels dried up, because all that
one was thinking was juice was nothing but dream.
In the second stage one feels very happy but still something
is missing. One is happy but one has not become
happiness yet. One is luminous but one has not become
luminosity yet. Yes, a light has come, but it is separate from
you—duality still exists.

In the third stage, via unitiva, one becomes one with existence.
Only then is the journey complete ... the pilgrimage
is over.

One of my friends has a book about black magic and just out of curiosity, I have borrowed it from him to read. It is a new subject for me and I find it interesting. I continue reading it till midnight and when I am really sleepy, I turn off the light and place the book on the side table of my bed, near Osho’s picture which he has signed and given to me. In a couple of minutes, the book slips down on the floor. Hearing this noise, I think that I have not placed the book properly and it has lost its balance and fallen down.

Again, the next night, I continue reading this book and when feeling sleepy, I place the book properly near Osho’s picture and turn off the light later on, remembering last night’s incident. Immediately, I get up with a great shock, hearing the noise of the book falling on the floor. I get scared. I switch on the light, not understanding what has happened. The book is on the floor. I look at Osho’s picture and I feel it very much alive.

He is smiling at me. I understand the message and picking up the book from the floor, I place it in another corner of the room. Next day, when I return the book to the friend, narrating him last night’s incident, he remarks, “You are fortunate. Your master has saved you.” I ask him, “What about you?” He answers, “I am totally in it and I don’t want to drop it in the middle.”

I feel sorry for the friend, when after few months I hear that he has gone mad.

Each person comes into this world with a specific destiny--he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally--you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The whole intends to do something through you."

IF YOU WANT TO BE FREE FROM THIS WORLD OF SUFFERING, FIRST YOU
MUST CONTEMPLATE IMPERMANENCE.

THOSE WHO ARE BORN MUST INEVITABLY DIE. EVEN THE YOUNG ARE NOT
EXEMPT; EVEN THE STRONG ARE IN DANGER. EVEN A LONG LIFE DOES NOT
LAST MORE THAN EIGHTY YEARS OR SO. IF YOU DON'T ANNIHILATE THE
NATURE OF AFFLICTIONS SOMEHOW, AND ARRIVE ON THE PATH OF
LIBERATION, EVEN IF YOU ASCEND TO THE RANK OF SOVEREIGN OF A
NATION, GREAT MINISTER, DEITY, SPIRIT, OR WIZARD, IT IS STILL
EVANESCENT AS LIGHTNING AND MORNING DEW, LASTING ONLY FOR A
WHILE.

WHEN CONDITIONS MEET, EVERYTHING SURELY SEEMS TO EXIST; BUT
WHEN THE CONDITIONS DISINTEGRATE -- EMPTINESS. THIS BODY IS GAINED
THROUGH THE RELATIONSHIP OF FATHER AND MOTHER, AND COMES FROM
THEIR CONDITIONS. SOLIDITY BECOMES SKIN, FLESH, LIGAMENT, AND BONE;
FLUIDITY BECOMES SPITTLE, TEARS, PUS, AND BLOOD; HEAT BECOMES
WARMTH AND FLEXIBILITY; AIR BECOMES BREATH AND MOVEMENT.

WHEN THESE FOUR CONDITIONS SUDDENLY ARE EXHAUSTED, THE BODY
GETS COLD AND THE BREATH STOPS -- THERE IS NOTHING CALLED "ME." AT
THAT TIME THIS BODY IS REALLY NOT OUR OWN; IT IS ONLY A TEMPORARY
INN. HOW CAN WE BE SO GREEDILY ATTACHED TO THIS TEMPORARY INN
THAT WE IGNORE ETERNITY?

CONTEMPLATING THESE FOUR TRANSCENDENCES -- IMPERMANENCE,
SUFFERING, EMPTINESS, SELFLESSNESS -- SEEKING THE WAY OF
ENLIGHTENMENT IS CALLED, "THE TEACHING OF FOUR REALITIES FOR
DISCIPLES." THIS IS THE ESSENTIAL GATEWAY TO BEGINNING ENTRY INTO
THE WAY FOR ALL ENLIGHTENED ONES.

Maneesha, before I discuss Torei's serious things, I have to introduce a few new animal
gods into Avirbhava's Museum of Gods. Before I call her, I will have to tell you something
about these gods.

"Sheep: The male sheep is known as a ram and has been a symbol of numerous gods.
Osiris and Ammon-Ra of Egypt were both worshipped as rams. The ram was sacrificed each
year in Egypt. It was skinned and the skin placed over an image of the god, recalling the time
when Ammon-Ra was incarnated in the form of a ram.

Apes: In ancient Egypt, apes were considered sacred and were preserved by embalming
them at death.

Mouse: One of the greatest of the Greek gods, Apollo, was known to take the form of a
mouse in his role as sender of the plague. Apollo, the sun god, would incarnate as mice and
rats to dispel the forces of night.

Horse: In Hinduism, the tenth incarnation of Vishnu is a white horse, Kalki. It has not yet
happened. Nine incarnations have happened; the tenth is awaited. The tenth will be called
Kalki. It will be a white horse, who is to come to judge the world at the end of this yuga, the
fourth and the last cycle of one million, eight hundred thousand years in the Hindu concept of
the world. He will destroy the wicked, reward the good, and enable Vishnu to create a new
world."

It seems the time for Kalki is coming near. Beware of the white horse!
"Bull: In ancient Persia, the bull was worshipped as the god who caused the grass to grow.
In Greece, the great god Zeus used the guise of a bull to seduce Europa, hoping thereby that
his animal transformation would elude his ever-watchful wife, Hera, from detecting his
adultery. The followers of Dionysius would kill a bull during midsummer festivals in honor of
the great god Zeus."

This Museum of Gods is not just a museum, it shows how human mind has remained
retarded. Rather than bringing consciousness to its heights, man has been worshipping all
kinds of animals. Even the future, the final incarnation of God in Hinduism, Kalki, is going to
be a white horse -- not a man, not a buddha. It shows the retardedness, the primitiveness of
our intelligence. This museum will be a symbol to the whole world to remind them: "This is
what your forefathers have been doing, what you are doing. And you call it religion!"
Before I ask Avirbhava to bring her new acquisitions, two little jokes about these gods.

Late one night, Satan the devil and his partner, Lucifer the monkey, knock on the door of
Pope the Polack's Vatican apartment. The Polack pope comes to the door with an arm around
his best friend, Simon the sheep.

"Good evening, your phoniness," says the devil, grinning cheekily and fondling his forked
tail. "My friend and I were wondering, do you have any midget nuns in your apartment?"

"Certainly not!" snaps back the pope, trying to slam the door.
"Well then, Holy Father," chuckles the devil, licking the flames of his lips and jamming
his pitchfork in the doorway, "do you have any midget nuns living in the Vatican?"

"I cannot say," shouts Pope the Polack, infuriated, "that I know of any midget nuns
anywhere at all!" And he grabs Simon the sheep's crucifix, and waves it wildly under the
devil's nose.

The devil picks up the monkey by the shoulders, lifts him in the air, and shakes him hard.

"You see, you idiot!" shouts Satan. "I told you you fucked a penguin!"

Pope the Polack goes for a summer retreat into the mountains of Italy. He lives in a little
stone cottage, and the only companions he has are a flock of sheep.

After a few days without any company, the Polack pope becomes crazy for sex, and he
chooses one of the horned sheep as a partner.
He takes off his gown and puts his machinery into the sheep. But while he is in action with
the poor animal, it suddenly starts to run. Pope the Polack, with his underwear down around
his ankles, is unable to do anything but hold on to the sheep's horns.

They race down the mountainside together, past a field where Grandma Pickle is picking
daisies. Grandma is a little short-sighted, but looks up in amazement as the sheep and the
Polack pope go racing past.

"My god!" she mutters to herself. "No money to buy pants, but he is driving a white
motorbike!"

Now, Avirbhava, bring your gods.
(THE MASTER LAUGHINGLY BECKONS AVIRBHAVA FORWARD. AVIRBHAVA
COMES FORWARD WITH A BULL DRESSED AS THE POPE, WHILE
SIMULTANEOUSLY SHEEP AND MICE START DANCING IN FRONT OF THE
MASTER ON A STRING, AND AN APE IS BOUNCING UP AND DOWN WILDLY ON A
PIECE OF ELASTIC.)
Great!

(AVIRBHAVA ASSISTS THE LITTLE POPE IN KISSING THE MASTER'S FEET,
WHILE A LIVE RECORDING OF THE POPE'S SERMON BOOMS OVER THE
LOUDSPEAKERS.)
Great, Avirbhava!

(THERE IS GENERAL HILARITY WITH THE MICE SQUEAKING, THE APE
GROWLING, ETC. BY THIS TIME THE MASTER IS REALLY ENJOYING IT!)
That's good!

Now the serious matter ...

Torei is not a master but he is certainly a great teacher. And I have chosen him so that you
can make a clear-cut distinction between the greatest teacher and the smallest master.
Even the smallest master, the humblest master, has a beauty, a truth, a realization. He may
not say a single word, but his silence is a scripture. The greatest teacher may know all the
scriptures, may have great interpretations, but he remains a parrot. What he says he does not
know; his saying is dependent on his learning, studying, but not on his experience, not on his
existential approach to his own being.

Torei is a good example of a great teacher. But such teachers can deceive humanity -- they
have been deceiving, because they talk beautifully. Their words are the same as the words of
the masters -- sometimes more refined, more cultivated, more cultured -- but still they are
empty. Once in a while they may quote a sentence which has significance; not because of
them, but because that sentence has come from some great living master. They have been
great collectors, but as far as their own reality is concerned they are as ignorant as one can be.

TOREI SAID:
IF YOU WANT TO BE FREE FROM THIS WORLD OF SUFFERING, FIRST YOU
MUST CONTEMPLATE IMPERMANENCE.

I have told you these words: concentration, contemplation, meditation. The fourth, which
is missing in the English language, is dhyana, or Zen in Japanese.

Contemplation is the way of the philosopher. He thinks it over. It is not beyond mind, it is
within mind. He may be very sophisticated, his words may be arranged beautifully, but he
cannot understand what meditation is; he can only understand contemplation. The very word
'contemplation' means thinking about higher things. But if you don't know those things, what
can you think about?

Contemplation is one of the most empty words. If you know, you know; there is no need to
contemplate. If you don't know, how can you contemplate? What are you going to
contemplate? What is going to be your subject matter? You are simply groping in darkness
and calling it contemplation.

He certainly is acquainted with the scriptures, very well acquainted, but he is committing
the same mistake millions of teachers around the world have committed. First:
IF YOU WANT TO BE FREE FROM THIS WORLD OF SUFFERING ...
Can you find a person who does not want to be free from suffering? There is no question
about it. Everybody wants to get rid of suffering, misery.
The way that Torei suggests is, FIRST YOU MUST CONTEMPLATE
IMPERMANENCE. It won't help. You can think everything is impermanent: birth is
impermanent, youth is impermanent, wealth is impermanent; life itself is running out.

Everything is impermanent. That does not mean it will take you out of suffering. It simply
makes you more aware that while there is time, enjoy as much as you can, because time is
passing and death is not far away.

Strangely enough, the same argument is given by Charvakas, the Indian atheists. They say,

"Everything is fleeting, so don't waste time in temples, in rituals, just eat, drink and be merry.

And if you don't have money, borrow money, because after death everyone is finished, nobody
is going to ask for his money back. After death, in the graveyard everybody sleeps soundly.

The man who borrowed the money and the man who gave the money both are dead. So don't
miss a single moment. Enjoy it, even if it is to be enjoyed on borrowed money."
The statement in Sanskrit is very beautiful. The statement says, no one who has gone
beyond death has ever come back. This is enough proof, more than enough, that death is the
end. And if death is the end, then why be worried about small things? It may be your own
pocket or somebody else's pocket, it does not matter. Death will not differentiate between the
sinner and the saint. There is no one to make the judgment.
RINAM KRITVA GHRITAM PIBET. Even if you have to borrow money, borrow it, but
drink refined butter. Don't be worried about tomorrow.

It was a great school, not only in India but in Greece also. These were the two countries at
that time which were touching the peaks of civilization. In Greece there was a great man,
Epicurus, and he still has a small following. But generally, the whole Western world is
Epicurian; they may know, they may not know.

Epicurus' whole teaching was that all is matter, and when all matter disintegrates nothing
is left behind. So don't bother about any spirituality, and don't bother about any other world --
there is none. There has not been a single witness. It is certainly a tremendous argument, that
there is not a single witness of the other world, the paradise. It seems to be all fancy,
imagination, wish-fulfillment. What you cannot get here, you project that you will get it after
life. It gives a certain consolation.

But what can you contemplate? Even if you contemplate that everything is impermanent,
that simply means do it quick, be speedy, things are fast running out of hand; squeeze the juice
of every moment without delay. Contemplation can take you into an atheistic worldview.
THOSE WHO ARE BORN MUST INEVITABLY DIE. EVEN THE YOUNG ARE NOT
EXEMPT.

Just because everyone is going to die ... Torei and similar teachers think that it is enough
for people to become detached because everything is going to die. The result is just the
contrary -- because everything is going to die, be quick before it dies.
A man was brought into a court in France for making love to a woman on the sea beach.

The charge was that he had been making love to a dead woman.

The magistrate asked him, "What do you have to say?"
He said, "I thought she was an English lady."

Man has been told by these teachers:
EVEN THE STRONG ARE IN DANGER. EVEN A LONG LIFE DOES NOT LAST
MORE THAN EIGHTY YEARS OR SO.

The desire is that you will think, "Everything is so changing, what is the point in going
after it?" That's what Torei is thinking. But he is absolutely blind to the fact that the more
people think things are going to change, the more they increase their speed. Why has humanity
been increasing its speed?

I have heard ... A newly-wed couple is rushing in a fresh, new Ferrari. The girl feels afraid
because the car is going at one hundred and fifty miles per hour. She is trembling, and she
asks the man, "Please at least look at the map."

The man says, "Who bothers about the map! Is it not enough to enjoy the speed itself? We
must reach somewhere, it cannot be nowhere. You can consult the map -- I am enjoying the
speed. I don't have any time to waste consulting the map. What is the point? Wherever we
reach, we will find a hotel; whether its name is Honeymoon Hotel or not does not matter."

Increasingly, humanity has been interested in speed, more speed. Perhaps you have not
taken into consideration the implication. The implication is, do everything as fast and quickly
as you can because life is short. But these people like Torei thought that if people contemplate
that everything is going to die ... why love this woman if she is going to die? -- if not today
then tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Even if she does not die, she will be in a worse
position -- she will become old. What is the point in loving a woman who will become old?
A man was telling a woman, "I love you. I love you more than my life."

The woman said, "Really? Will you love me always as you love me now?"
The man contemplated and he said, "There is only one problem. When you become old,
will you look like your mother? Then I withdraw my statement. I cannot love your mother --
that much is certain. Will you remain the same?"

Nothing remains the same.

From the point of change there are two roads. One leads to atheism, materialism -- enjoy,
there is nothing much to discover. The other road is that because everything is impermanent,
try to find something permanent. That is what the masters do -- help the person to find
something in himself that is absolutely eternal.

That is the goal of meditation, not of contemplation. But a thinker cannot understand
meditation. He cannot understand that you can go out of your mind. How can you jump out of
your mind? You are mind. To him you are nothing more than mind. And you can see his
statement:

IF YOU DON'T ANNIHILATE THE NATURE OF AFFLICTIONS SOMEHOW, AND
ARRIVE ON THE PATH OF LIBERATION, EVEN IF YOU ASCEND TO THE RANK OF
SOVEREIGN OF A NATION, GREAT MINISTER, DEITY, SPIRIT, OR WIZARD, IT IS
STILL EVANESCENT AS LIGHTNING AND MORNING DEW, LASTING ONLY FOR A
WHILE.

WHEN CONDITIONS MEET, EVERYTHING SURELY SEEMS TO EXIST; BUT
WHEN THE CONDITIONS DISINTEGRATE -- EMPTINESS.

You are just a certain combination of conditions. When those conditions meet, you are.

When those conditions disintegrate -- nothingness. A buddha can also say the same thing, but
he says it because he knows nothingness is not nothingness, because he knows you have
entered into your inner sky -- which looks to the outsider like nothingness.

But when a teacher says this, not knowing anything about it, there is every danger that he
will create people who will become materialists. If everything ends then what is the point of
being virtuous, what is the point of prayer, what is the point of donations, what is the point of
service to the poor? Why waste time? Just enjoy life -- drink, dance, do whatever you want to,
because death will come. And it comes to everyone, the saint and the sinner, in a similar way;
it does not make any categories.

THIS BODY IS GAINED THROUGH THE RELATIONSHIP OF FATHER AND
MOTHER.

This type of thing can be told only by a teacher. Everybody knows this body is gained
through the relationship of father and mother. And then more stupid things he goes on saying:

... AND COMES FROM THEIR CONDITIONS. SOLIDITY BECOMES SKIN.

How can solidity become skin? If I had met this fellow ... I have every respect for his
learning but I would put him to task, to turn solidity into skin -- or skin into solidity, that
would do.

Great philosophy! And he is talking as if he is stating some scientific discoveries.
WHEN THESE FOUR CONDITIONS SUDDENLY ARE EXHAUSTED, THE BODY
GETS COLD AND THE BREATH STOPS.

Great contemplation!

THERE IS NOTHING CALLED "ME." AT THAT TIME THIS BODY IS REALLY NOT
OUR OWN; IT IS ONLY A TEMPORARY INN. HOW CAN WE BE SO GREEDILY
ATTACHED TO THIS TEMPORARY INN THAT WE IGNORE ETERNITY?

CONTEMPLATING THESE FOUR TRANSCENDENCES -- IMPERMANENCE,
SUFFERING, EMPTINESS, SELFLESSNESS -- SEEKING THE WAY OF
ENLIGHTENMENT IS CALLED, "THE TEACHING OF FOUR REALITIES FOR
DISCIPLES." THIS IS THE ESSENTIAL GATEWAY TO BEGINNING ENTRY INTO
THE WAY FOR ALL ENLIGHTENED ONES.

This is the problem with the learned scholarship. They see that the enlightened one shows
in his every action non-attachment, impermanence, because the enlightened one never suffers;
in his consciousness he is beyond suffering. The scholar watches all these qualities from the
outside and then he creates his great ideology: if you contemplate impermanence,
non-attachment, suffering, you will enter into the gateway of the buddhas.

He himself has not entered. These are not the words of a buddha, these are the words of a
great teacher who has collected fragments of teachings from here and there. And he is not
honest, either -- no scholar is. It is very difficult to find a scholar who will say that what he is
saying is not his knowledge. He pretends that what he is saying, he knows, that he is saying it
only because he knows.

Every scholar, almost without exception, is a pretender. And because of these pretenders,
it becomes very difficult for people to figure out who the authentic masters are. The scholars
speak of the gateway of the buddha, they speak about eternity, they speak about emptiness.
Their words are perfectly right, but the men who are speaking them are not right, because
these words are borrowed.

Once you borrow a truth it becomes untrue. Truth can arise only within you; it cannot be
adopted -- you have to remember this. In life you will meet many people who appear to know
so much that you are overwhelmed by their knowledge. But inside there is nothing, no
experience.

A great psychologist, head of the department of psychology in Varanasi University ... I was
only a student and one of my friends had gone from the college to study in Varanasi. He came
into contact with this psychologist, Professor Laljiram Shukla, and the professor became so
much interested in him that he married his daughter to the young man.
Chapter 5 - The gateway of the buddhas

The young man was continuously talking about me to him: "You should meet my friend."
Continuously mentioning me, he became obsessed.

He started writing to me saying, "I will pay all the fare and you will stay with me in the
university. You come, just be a guest for one week, because I have heard so much about you
from my son-in-law that now it is becoming a disturbance in me." So I went.
In the morning, nearabout twenty-five professors of the university had gathered to meet
me. The professor of psychology, Laljiram Shukla, was perhaps the only great psychologist in
India; people were very respectful about him. We all waited because he was worshipping the
monkey god, Hanuman. When his worship was over he came and he greeted me, and he said,
"I have been waiting. How long are you going to stay?"

I said, "That will be decided within ten minutes."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Just sit down. You think you are a psychologist and you worship a monkey! Do
you believe in Darwin -- that man is born out of the monkeys? Perhaps you are worshipping
your forefathers?"
He said, "This is very insulting."

I said, "That's why I said that just within ten minutes I will decide how long I have to stay
here. I can stay here my whole life, but I don't think that even for one hour you will be able to
tolerate me."

I questioned him directly. I said to him, "You are worshipping for what? There must be
some desire. Some desire perhaps to be the vice-chancellor or to be the education minister or
to be the prime minister of India? For what are you worshipping? Because a man who has no
desire has no need to worship. Do you think a monkey can manage what you cannot manage?
Why are you putting yourself into such humiliation before a monkey?"

He said, "Don't refer to my god again and again by the name 'monkey'."

I said, "What can I do? He is a monkey. And it is not a question of whether he is your
forefather or not. The question is, a psychologist is still primitive. Have you seen God?"

Those professors who had gathered became very uneasy. They had come to see if some
discussion will happen which will be profitable to them, but there seemed to be no way to
discuss with me. I said, "Non-essentials aside, just remember the monkey god and tell the
truth: have you ever seen God?"

He became so angry, he called his son-in-law and told him, "You idiot! You have been
harassing me again and again, and now he is disturbing my belief system."

I said, "A man of your understanding should not remain with belief systems.

He should
have something which he knows, not only believes, and you don't have anything that you
know. Or if you know just tell me, we can discuss it. What is the point of discussing
something which you don't know?"

The ultimate result was that he told his son-in-law to pack my suitcases and take me
immediately to the airport. "I don't want such a man; in seven days he will destroy my whole
life's religiousness." And because all the professors came down to say goodbye to me, he was
very angry. Later on his son-in-law wrote to me, saying that he was so angry with all the
professors: "You left me alone and you went with him to say goodbye to him. It seems you
agree with him."

They said, "There is no question of agreement -- you misbehaved. If you don't know, you
should have said, 'I don't know.' That would have been more dignified. You had been inviting
him, he had not come on his own; now you have thrown him out of the house. Still, he was
not angry, he was just laughing."

I said, "I knew it. That's why I did not give the time, how long I would be there. I know
myself."

But later on he felt very guilty. And he also felt, how is he going to face all those
twenty-five professors in the university? He wrote to me a letter of apology. I answered him
that "There is no question of apology. You have not insulted me, you have only insulted
yourself. You have been insulting yourself your whole life -- by your worshipping, by your
so-called religiousness, by all kinds of belief systems. And not knowing a single thing. It is
good that I accepted your invitation and created a chaos in your mind.

Perhaps, seeing the
chaos, you will come out of the mind. And that is the world I had come to discuss with you --
the world beyond mind." But for the scholars mind is all.

When all the conditions collapse, Torei is saying, nothing remains. This word 'nothing' has
very strange connotations. When a buddha says "nothing" he means no-thing, and when a
scholar says "nothing" he simply means emptiness. When a buddha says "nothing" he says
there is no-thing anymore: pure space, utter silence ...

We all speak the same language. The master has also to use the same language but he
gives new meanings to words, new fragrances to words, new poetry to words. They go
dancing into your heart, the same ordinary words, with such extraordinary radiance,
penetration. But one has to be a knower himself.

This gathering is not for those who are interested in studying religion. This gathering is
only for those who are interested in experiencing what religion is all about. It is an existential,
experimental lab. It is as scientific as any science. No question of belief -- you are not asked
what you believe. No question of your mind -- whatever kind of mind you have, just put it
aside.

You may have a great learned mind; that is perfectly okay, put it aside. You may have a
very ordinary mind, uneducated; no matter, just put it by the side of the great scholar's mind.
Mind has no value here. The value arises only when mind is no more there. Then you start
growing into a different dimension which can only be called existential.
Before we do our meditation, a few words from some authentic masters.
A haiku by Issa:

LISTEN,
ALL CREEPING THINGS --
THE BELL OF TRANSIENCE.

Nothing to be done, just listen ... everything is changing. What is the point? The point is
that the listener is never changing; the watcher is always there. That is the only permanent
thing in existence.
LISTEN -- or watch --
ALL CREEPING THINGS --
THE BELL OF TRANSIENCE.

Now, any scholar can repeat that, there is no problem -- the words are very simple. But
Issa KNOWS it.

Sengai says:
WHAT MIND DO YOU PUNCTUATE?
THE PAST, PRESENT, OR FUTURE?
THE CANDLE IS BLOWN OUT,
AND THE DIAMOND TURNS TO ASHES.

He is saying the same thing: WHAT MIND DO YOU PUNCTUATE? The past is no
more, the future is not yet, and if there is no past and no future, how can there be any present?
What time ... WHAT MIND DO YOU PUNCTUATE? Neither the mind is there, nor time
is there. When mind and time both disappear, THE CANDLE IS BLOWN OUT.

That is exactly the meaning of the word 'nirvana': THE CANDLE IS BLOWN OUT. Now
can you find the flame of the candle? Even if you look through the whole universe you will
not find it. It has simply become one with the universe. The moment the candle of mind,
which is equivalent to the candle of time, is blown out -- utter silence ... Nothing is found, but
tremendous peace, a feeling of coming home ...

THE LANGUAGE OF EXISTENCE, OSHO

heartbeatsalute

30-04-2012, 03:03 AM

http://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt11/mansuridam/osho2.jpg

Osho on Upanishads - The word upanishad is tremendously important. It simply means sitting down close to a Master; it is a communion. The Master is living in wholeness; he is living herenow, he is pulsating herenow. His life has a music, his life has a joy, a silence of immense depth. His life is full of light.

Just to sit silently by the side of a Master is enough, because the presence of a Master is infectious, the presence of the Master is overwhelming. His silence starts reaching to your very heart. His presence becomes a magnetic pull on you: it pulls you out of the mud of the past and the future. It brings you into the present. Upanishad is a communion, not a communication. A communication is head-to-head and a communion is heart-to-heart. This is one of the greatest secrets of spiritual life, and nowhere else, at no other time, it was understood so deeply as in the days of the Upanishads.

The Upanishads were born nearabout five thousand years before. A secret communion, a transmission beyond the scriptures, a communion, a transmission beyond the scriptures, a communion beyond the words... this is what UPANISHAD is – you sitting silently, not just listening to my words but listening to my presence too. The words are only excuses to hang the silence upon. The silence is the real content, the word is only a container. If you become too much interested in the word you miss the spirit.

So don’t be too much interested in the word. Listen to the heartbeat of the word. When a Master speaks, those words are coming from his innermost core. They are full of his color, of his light. They carry some of the perfume of his being. If you are open and vulnerable, receptive, welcoming, they will penetrate into your heart and a process is triggered.

What Carl Gustav Jung calls synchronicity explains exactly what happens between a Master and a disciple. It is not the same as what happens between a teacher and a student. Between teacher and a student there is a communication; some information is transferred by the teacher to the student, but no transformation – only information. The teacher himself is not transformed, he himself has not arrived. He is repeating words from other teachers, he may be even repeating words from other Masters, but he has not known himself; his words are borrowed. He may be very scholarly, he may be very well-informed, but that is not the real thing. Information is not the real thing – transformation.

And unless one is transformed he cannot trigger the process of transformation in others. Carl Gustav Jung calls this synchronicity. The Master cannot cause your enlightenment. It is not a scientific process, it is far more poetic. It is not a law like the law of cause and effect; it is far more liquid, far more loose, far more flexible. The Master cannot cause the enlightenment to happen in you, but he can trigger the process, and that too only if you allow, not against your will. Nothing can be done to you unless you are totally receptive. This can happen only in a love affair.

Between the teacher and the student there is a business: between the Master and the disciple there is a love affair. The disciple is surrendered; that is the meaning of ”sitting down”. He is surrendered, he has put his ego aside. He is simply open, in tremendous trust. Of course, doubt will hinder the process.

Doubt is perfectly good when you are collecting information: the more you doubt, the more information you will be able to collect, because each doubt will create questions in you and questions are needed to find answers. But each answer will be doubted again in its own turn, creating more questions. and so on. so forth

But with a Master doubt is a hindrance. It is not of asking a question, it is a quest of the soul; it is enquiry of the heart, it is not intellectual curiosity. It is NOT curiosity, it is far more important – it is a question of life and death. When one is tired of all questions and all answers, when one is fed up with all philosophy, only then one comes to a Master. When one has accumulated much information and still remains ignorant, and all that information does not create any light within his soul, then he comes to a Master, to sit by
his side. There are no questions any more; he knows now one thing. that all questions are futile. He has tried and he has seen the whole futility of it. Now he sits in silence, open, available, receptive, like a womb. The disciple becomes feminine, and only in those feminine moments the Master, without any effort on his part, starts overflooding the disciple. It happens naturally.

The DISCIPLE IS not doing anything, the MASTER IS not doing anything – it is not a question of doing at all. The Master is being himself and the disciple is open. When your nose is not closed by cold and you pass by the side of a flower, suddenly the fragrance is
felt. The flower is not doing anything in particular; it is natural for the flower to release its fragrance. If you are open to receive it you will receive it.

The word upanishad means coming to a Master, and one comes to a Master only when one is tired of teachers, tired of teachings, tired of dogmas, creeds, philosophies, theologies, religions. Then one comes to a Master. And the way to come to a Master is surrender. Not that your being is surrendered – only the ego, the false idea that you are somebody, somebody special. The moment you put the idea of the ego aside, the doors are open – for the wind, for the rain, for the sun – and the Master’s presence will start entering in you, creating a new dance in your life, giving you a new sense of poetry, mystery,
music. It is synchronicity.

The Master is beating in a certain rhythm, he is dancing on a certain plane. If you are ready, the same dance starts happening in you – in the beginning only a little bit, but that’s enough, that little bit is enough. In the beginning only dewdrops, but soon they become oceanic. Once you have tasted the joy of being open you cannot be closed again. First you may open only a window or a door, and then you open all your windows and all the doors. And a moment comes in the life of a disciple when not only windows and doors are opened, even the walls disappear! He is utterly open, available multidimensionally. This is the meaning of the word upanishad.

The Upanishads are written in Sanskrit; Sanskrit is the oldest language on the earth. The very word sanskrit means transformed, adorned, crowned, decorated, refined – but remember the word ”transformed”. The language itself was transformed because so many people attained to the ultimate, and because they were using the language, something of their joy penetrated into it, something of their poetry entered into the very cells, the very fiber of the language. Even the language became transformed, illuminated. It was bound to happen. Just as it is happening today in the West, languages are becoming more and more scientific, accurate, mathematical, precise.

They have to be because science is giving them its color, its shape, its form. If science is growing, then of course the language in which the science will be expressed will have to be scientific. The same happened five thousand years before in India with Sanskrit. So many people became enlightened and they were all speaking Sanskrit; their enlightenment entered into it with all its music, with all its poetry, with all its celebration. Sanskrit became luminous Sanskrit is the most poetic and musical language in existence.

A poetic language is just the opposite of a scientific language. In scientific language every word has to be very precise in meaning; it has to have only one meaning. In a poetic language the word has to be liquid, flowing, dynamic, not static, allowing many meanings, many possibilities. The word has to be not precise at all; the more imprecise it is the better, because then it will be able to express all kinds of nuances.

Hence the Sanskrit sutras can be defined in many ways, can be commented upon in many ways – they allow much playfulness. For example, there are eight hundred roots in Sanskrit and out of those eight hundred roots thousands of words have been derived, just as out of one root a tree grows and many branches and thousands of leaves and hundreds of flowers. Each single root becomes a vast tree with great foliage.

For example, the root RAM can mean first ”to be calm”, second ”to rest”, third ”to delight in”, fourth ”cause delight to”, fifth ”to make love”, sixth ”to join”, seventh ”to make happy”, eighth ”to be blissful”, ninth ”to play”, tenth ”to be peaceful”, eleventh ”to stand still”, twelfth ”to stop, to come to a full stop”, and thirteenth ”God, divine, the absolute”. And these are only few of the meanings of the root. Sometimes the meanings are related to each other, sometimes not; sometimes even they are contradictory to each other. Hence the language has a multidimensional quality to it. You can play with those words and through that play you can express the inexpressible; the inexpressible can be
hinted.

The Sanskrit language is called DEVAVANI – the divine language. And it certainly is divine in the sense because it is the most poetic and the most musical language. Each word has a music around it, a certain aroma. How it happened? It happened because so many people used it who were full of inner harmony. Of course those words became luminous: they were used by people who were enlightened. Something of their light filtered to the words, reached to the words; something of their silence entered the very grammar, the very language they were using.

The script in which Sanskrit is written is called DEVANAGARI; DEVANAGARI means ”dwelling-place of the gods”, and so certainly it is. Each word has become divine, just because it has been used by people who had known God or godliness. This Upanishad in which we are entering today is the smallest – it can be written on a postcard – and yet it is the greatest document in existence. There is no document of such luminosity, of such profoundness anywhere in the whole history of humanity. The name of the Upanishad is ISA UPANISHAD.

The world of the Upanishads is very close to my approach. In fact, what I am doing here is giving a rebirth to the spirit of the Upanishads. It has disappeared even from India, and it has not been on the scene at least for three thousand years. There is a gap of three thousand years, and in these three thousand years India has destroyed its own achievement. The first thing is that Upanishads are not anti-life, they are not for renouncing life. Their approach is whole: life has to be lived in its totality. They don’t teach escapism. They want you to LIVE in the world, but in such a way that you remain ABOVE the world, in a certain sense transcendental to the world, living in the world and yet not being of it. But they don’t teach you that life has to be renounced, that you have to escape from life, that life is ugly or life is sin. They rejoice in life! It is a gift of God; it is the manifest form of God. This fundamental has to be remembered.

Upanishads say that the world is the manifest form of God and the God is the unmanifest form of the world, and every manifest phenomenon has an unmanifest noumenon inside it.

My talking to you has not the ordinary purpose that talking serves: indoctrination -- that is not the purpose of my talks. I don't have any doctrine; my talking is really a process of dehypnotization.

Just listening to me, slowly, slowly you will be free of all the programs that the society has forced you to believe in. Just by listening with an open heart, with a receiving gratefulness, it is bound to happen. It can become a music in you; it can relax you, can make you silent, can give a new rhythm to your heart... a new feeling of my presence, a new perception of reality.

The question is your way of listening. If it is right, then whatever I am saying will relax your being totally, and slowly, slowly your conditionings will start falling apart.---OSHO

heartbeatsalute

30-04-2012, 04:34 AM

It will be as difficult as it was for the frog you have heard about, who lived in a small well. It is a Sufi story. One day it happened that a frog from the ocean came to the well -- he must have been a tourist. He came into the well, introduced himself to the frog of the well, and said, 'I come from the ocean.'

Naturally, the frog asked, 'Ocean? What do you mean by ocean? What is it?'

And the frog from the ocean said, 'It is very difficult to describe, sir, because you have never left this well it seems. It is so small. But still I will try.'

The frog of the well laughed. He said, 'Nobody has ever heard about anything bigger than this well. How big is your ocean?' And the frog of the well jumped one third of the space of the well and said, 'This much?'

And the frog from the ocean laughed. He said, 'No, sir.'

So the frog from the well jumped two thirds of the space and said, 'This much?' Then he jumped the whole space and said, 'Now it must be exactly like this well.'

But the frog from the ocean said, 'It is impossible to describe. The difference is not of quantity, it is of quality. It is vast! It is not circumscribed!'

The frog from the well said, 'You seem to be either a madman or a philosopher or a liar. You get out from here! Don't talk nonsense!'

im still a few pages behind (to me Osho is not a fast read) but the post about his upbringing got me interested to see if he ever had any girlfriends. it doesnt sound like it but he must of had some girls on the side and just kept it on the down low. :D i dont know why this info is even important to me but in my search i came across the:

Osho's "Ten Commandments"

1.Never obey anyone's command unless it is coming from within you also.
2.There is no God other than life itself.
3.Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere.
4.Love is prayer.
5.To become a nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means, the goal and attainment.
6.Life is now and here.
7.Live wakefully.
8.Do not swim—float.
9.Die each moment so that you can be new each moment.
10.Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see.

wow!

heartbeatsalute

30-04-2012, 05:00 PM

im still a few pages behind (to me Osho is not a fast read) but the post about his upbringing got me interested to see if he ever had any girlfriends. it doesnt sound like it but he must of had some girls on the side and just kept it on the down low. :D i dont know why this info is even important to me but in my search i came across the:

Osho's "Ten Commandments"

1.Never obey anyone's command unless it is coming from within you also.
2.There is no God other than life itself.
3.Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere.
4.Love is prayer.
5.To become a nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means, the goal and attainment.
6.Life is now and here.
7.Live wakefully.
8.Do not swim—float.
9.Die each moment so that you can be new each moment.
10.Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see.

wow!

Quite interesting lonestar. If you are interested in his upbringing and family and all that, the book called GLIMPSES OF A GOLDEN CHILDHOOD, tells all about it. :D

im still a few pages behind (to me Osho is not a fast read) but the post about his upbringing got me interested to see if he ever had any girlfriends. it doesnt sound like it but he must of had some girls on the side and just kept it on the down low. :D i dont know why this info is even important to me...

lol :D

...but in my search i came across the:

Osho's "Ten Commandments"

1.Never obey anyone's command unless it is coming from within you also.
2.There is no God other than life itself.
3.Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere.
4.Love is prayer.
5.To become a nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means, the goal and attainment.
6.Life is now and here.
7.Live wakefully.
8.Do not swim—float.
9.Die each moment so that you can be new each moment.
10.Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see.

God, so many inspirated people here today with inspirational stuff. :cool: :)

heartbeatsalute

30-04-2012, 05:11 PM

lol :D

God, so many inspirated people here today with inspirational stuff. :cool: :)

Good way to start the week friends. :D:):cool:

heartbeatsalute

30-04-2012, 06:23 PM

http://www.vopus.org/ro/images/articole/uroboros.jpg

Hindi

CHAPTER 1

Kundalini – The Sleeping Serpent

2 May 1970 am in Pune , India

I do not know why you have come here. Perhaps you too, do not know. Most of us live in such
a way that we are not aware why we are living, where we are going and why. We do not ask of
ourselves, ”Why?” When our whole life is spent without asking these basic questions it is no wonder
if you all have come without knowing the purpose of your coming. Maybe a few of you know it, but
the possibility is very small.

We live and walk and see and hear in such a state of sleep, in such a state of deep unconsciousness
that we fail to see that which is. We fail to hear that which is said, and we fail to come in contact with
and experience that which surrounds us from all sides – within and without. So it is no wonder if you
have come here unknowingly, unaware.

We do not know why we are alive. And we are not aware of what we do – so much so that we are
not conscious even of our breathing.

But I well know why I am here. And that’s what I want to share with you.
Man’s quest continues through lives, and it is after the endeavor of countless lives that he gets a
glimpse of what we call bliss or peace or truth or God or moksha or nirvana – call it what you like,
although there is no word that can say it. One attains to it after many many lives. And all those
who seek it think that they are going to enjoy completely after they have found it; but they are very
mistaken. They find after attainment that it is just the beginning of a new labor, a new undertaking,
that there is no resting.

Until yesterday they strove hard to find it; now they are rushing about to share it with others. If it was
not so, Buddha would not have visited our towns, Mahavira would not have knocked at our doors
and Christ would not have called on us. After coming in contact with the supreme, a new kind of
work begins. In fact, whatsoever is significant in life brings great joy and bliss when you find it, but
it is much more joyous and blissful when you share it with others. One who is blessed with bliss or
God becomes restless to share it with others. Just as a flower on blooming broadcasts its fragrance,
or as a cloud rains or a wave rushes to embrace the seashore – similarly, when somebody finds
something of the beyond, his soul thirsts to reach everywhere with its fragrance and spread it.

I am aware about me, why I am here. And this meeting of ours can be meaningful if you too are here
for the same reasons, and if you and I meet each other at the same plane.

Otherwise, as it often
happens, there can be no meeting whatsoever even though we are crossing each other’s paths. If
you are not here for the same reasons as I am, there will be no meeting point between us in spite of
our living in such close physical proximity.

I would like you to see that which I now see. It is so near that it is amazing how you don’t see it. And
many times I suspect that you have deliberately closed your eyes and ears.

Otherwise how could
you miss it? Jesus has said again and again that people have eyes but they don’t see and they have
ears but they don’t hear. Not only the blind are blind and the deaf are deaf, even they are blind and
deaf who have both eyes and ears That is why you don’t see and hear and feel that which is so near
and which surrounds you from everywhere. What is the matter?

Undoubtedly there is some small obstruction in the way of your vision. It is, however, not a big
obstruction. It is like a speck of dust that gets in the eye and obstructs the view of a whole mountain.

Just a tiny speck of dust can blind your eyes. Logic will say that it should be a huge thing that
obstructs the view of a mountain. Arithmetic will say that the thing that prevents you from seeing a
mountain must be something bigger than the mountain itself. But in reality the speck of dust is a
very small thing and so are our eyes. But because the dust covers the eyes the mountain is covered
and thus made invisible to the eyes.

Similarly, what obstructs our inner vision is not something as big as a mountain, it is but a little dust.
And it is what has made us blind to reality. Because of a tiny obstruction all the truths of life remain
hidden from us.

Certainly, I am not talking about the physical eyes with which we see things.

This creates great
confusion. Remember well that in existence only that truth is meaningful for us for which a sensitivity
is created within us to receive it, to grasp it, to accept it and to live it. If I have no ears, I cannot
hear even the roar of the sea which is so loud and powerful. Even if the ocean continues to roar for
eternity I can never hear it. Just for lack of ears the roar of the ocean will be wasted on me. And
even if the sun appears at my doorstep I cannot see him if I have no eyes. And similarly if I don’t
have hands I cannot touch anyone, howsoever I may wish to touch him.

There is so much talk about God and bliss: there are any number of scriptures in the world, millions
of people are praying and singing hymns in temples and churches and mosques, but in spite of it all
it does not seem that we have any contact with God or that we see him, hear him, feel his heartbeat
in our being. It seems to be nothing more than empty talk. Maybe we continue to talk about God
in the belief that through talking we can either find him or belie the experience of him. But nothing
will happen if the deaf talk for lives about musical notes and the blind talk for eternity about light. It
is possible, however, that they will fall victim to the illusion that they are not deaf and blind. Through
talking about them, they can come to believe that they know what sound is and what light is.

Temples and churches and mosques that we have built all over the earth have succeeded in creating
this illusion, this deception. People sitting in and around them possess nothing but illusions. At the
most they can believe in God, but they cannot know him. And believing is not worth more than
talking. We can believe if the talk is convincing enough. If someone argues forcefully and proves the
existence of God and we fail to prove that he is not, then we feel defeated and we begin to accept
God. But believing is not knowing. Howsoever we convince the blind man about the existence of
light, he cannot know light and he cannot see.

I am here with the understanding that knowing is possible.

Undoubtedly there is a center inside us which is lying dormant – a center which once in a great while
a Krishna comes to know and begins to dance in ecstasy, which a Jesus comes to know and cries
from the cross, ”Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing!” Certainly a Mahavira
comes to know of this center, and because of this center a Gautam Siddhartha becomes Buddha –
the awakened one. Definitely there is a center – an eye, an ear – which is lying asleep. And I am
here especially to help you to awaken this center.

Here is an electric bulb shedding light on us all. If you cut the wire that connects it with the power
house it will cease shedding light, although the bulb will remain the same. If the electric current fails
to reach the bulb, there will be darkness in the place of light here. It is the same bulb turned inactive
since the current is not passing through it. And what can the poor bulb do if the current does not
reach it?

There is a center inside each one of us through which God is known, but because the life force does
not reach that center it is lying dormant, inactive, asleep. Even if your eyes are normal and healthy,
they will be useless if the life force does not reach and activate them.
A young woman was brought to me by her relatives. She had fallen in love with some young man.

When her family came to know of it, they came in the way of their meeting each other and they
erected a wall between them – a real wall. We have yet to create a good world, in which no walls
will be raised between a pair of lovers. The family stopped all con tacts between the girl and her
boyfriend. The girl belonged to a respectable family and her lover lived next door and they usually
saw each other from the rooftops of their houses. So literally a wall was erected to prevent their
meeting.

And the day the wall was erected the young woman suddenly went blind.
In the beginning the parents were suspicious; they thought she was pretending blindness. They
berated her and threatened to beat her. But blindness is not cured by threats. Then doctors were
consulted who said that her eyes were okay, but they also said that she was not lying; she was really
unable to see. They said that they could not do anything in the matter; it was a kind of psychological
blindness. The life force has stopped reaching her eyes, it has been blocked.

That is why she went
blind, although nothing was physically wrong with her eyes.

Then she was brought to me. I tried to understand the whole thing. I asked her what had really
happened, if anything had happened to her at the mind’s level. Recalling her story she said, ”My
mind then said that there was no use for the eyes if they cannot see the one they were meant to
see. It is better they ceased to see at all. A single thought haunted my mind the whole day when the
wall was erected, and it was that I was going blind. Even in sleep I dreamed that I had gone blind.

Because if my eyes were denied the privilege of seeing the very person who delighted them, who
meant everything to them, then it was good that they lost their power of sight.”

The young woman’s mind had consented to her blindness, and so the life force stopped going to her
eyes. The eyes are m good shape, they can see, but the energy with which they see has ceased to
reach them.

There is a center of our being, hidden within us, where God is known, where we get a glimpse of
truth and where we relate with the primordial energy of life. It is this center from where the celestial
music is heard, a music that is created without the help of any instruments, and from where such
fragrance becomes available which is not of this earth, which is ineffable. It is again this very center
which knows no bondage whatsoever and which is the door to freedom, absolute freedom. And it
is, this center that leads us to the beyond which has no frontiers, which is a limitless and infinite
expanse, which knows no sorrow and which is nothing but bliss and more bliss and more bliss;
nothing but abounding bliss.

But our life force does not reach that center, it is impeded somewhere on its way to it, somewhere
quite close to it.

It is necessary to understand this thing very clearly, because what I call meditation is going to be our
utmost effort for these three days – to reach the life force to that center where the flower can bloom,
the lamp can be lighted, the eye, the third eye can open and the super sense can be availed. It is
this center from where a few have seen truth or God or whatsoever you call it, and from where all
have a right to see it.

But it is not necessary for a seed, just because it is a seed, to become a tree. Every seed is entitled
to be a tree, but they don’t become. Although the seed has the potential to be a tree, it is also
necessary to sow it and to fertilize it. It is necessary for the seed to break up, to disintegrate and to
die as a seed so that it can become a tree. Only that seed is transformed into a tree which is ready
to disintegrate and disappear into the soil. And if we look at the tree and the seed together, placed
side by side, it is difficult to believe, how a tiny seed could turn into a large tree. It seems impossible.

It seems impossible, how a little seed is trans formed into a large tree. We have always had this
feeling whenever we looked at men like Krishna or Buddha. Standing near Krishna we felt that it
was impossible to be like him. So we said, ”You are God, and we are just ordinary persons; we
cannot be like you. You are an avatar, an incarnation, and we are just petty people who can only
crawl anyhow. It is not in our power to be like you.” Whenever a Buddha or a Mahavira has crossed
our path, we touched their feet and said, ”You are a teerthankara, an incarnation, a son of God, and
we are very ordinary people.” If a seed could speak it would say the same thing to the tree, ”You are
God and I am an ordinary seed; how can I be like you?” How can a seed believe that a large tree is
hidden in it?

But it is a fact that what is a large tree today was once a tiny seed, and the tiny seed of today will
turn into a large tree tomorrow.
Infinite possibilities lie hidden within each of us. But so long as we are not aware of them, no
scriptures and no godmen, however loudly they say it, can prove their existence. And it is as it
should be, because it is sheer deception to believe what we don’t know. It is better for us to say that
we don’t know that God is.

But it is equally true that a few persons have known God. And a few others have known them, and
their whole lives have been transformed through it; they have seen celestial flowers blooming all
around them. But we cannot have it just by worshipping them. Unfortunately, religions have stopped
with worshipping. But how can a seed become a tree by worshipping it? And a river cannot become
an ocean however much it worships the ocean. And however much an egg worships the bird it
cannot spread its wings in the sky. The egg will have to crack its shell; it will have to disappear as
an egg first. When, for the first time, a chick comes out of its shell it cannot imagine that it can fly.

Seeing birds on the wing it cannot believe that it too can fly. Even as its mother flies, even as the
mother urges it on to fly, it lacks confidence, it feels shaky. It sits on the edges of the bough and
gathers courage. How can one who has never known flying believe that it can fly and go on a long
journey in the vast sky?

I know well that for these three days you too are going to sit on the edges of the pine trees here and
wonder if a journey into the unknown is possible. Howsoever loudly I urge you to jump, to leap, to
fly, you will not believe that flying is possible. How can the birds that have never been on the wing
believe that flying is possible? There is no way but to take a jump. For once you will have to leap
without knowing what it is. It has to be a leap in the dark, to begin with.

Somebody wants to learn swimming. He will not be wrong if he says that he will not step into the river
without having learned swimming. It sounds right and logical – how can he step into water before
he knows how to swim? But the teacher will say that he cannot learn swimming without entering the
river. And this discussion about swimming can go on without end. What is the solution? The trainer
will insist on his entering into the water first; otherwise swimming will not be possible. And he is right.

In fact, learning be gins with stepping into the river. Everybody knows swimming; they do not have
to learn it. If you have learned swimming then you know that it has not to be learned. Everybody
knows swimming, but he does not know how to swim methodically. You get the method, the knack
of it, only after you have entered the river. In the beginning you throw up your hands and feet in a
haphazard manner, and as you go on, as you persevere, you do it skillfully.

Everyone knows how to
throw up one’s hands and feet, but when you practice for awhile it becomes methodical. So those
who know will say that swimming is not a learning, it is a remembering.
So those who know say that the experience of God is a remembering. It is not something which we
are going to learn today. The day we will come to know it we will exclaim, ”Hey, so this is swimming!

We could have done it anytime, we knew it. But we never gathered courage to take the jump, we
just kept hanging on the bank of the river.” Stepping into the water is very necessary, and as soon
as one is inside it the work begins,

The center I am talking about is hidden in our brain. If you ask the brain specialists they will say
that only a very small portion of the brain is active; a major part remains inactive, and it is difficult to
say what is hidden in that major part. Even a genius uses a very small part of his brain – the rest
remains dormant and unused. The brain is the abode of what we call the supersense, or the sixth
sense, or the third eye. This center is closed and dormant, and once it is opened we shall see life in
many new dimensions. Matter will disappear and God will appear; form will be lost and the formless
will be revealed; the figure will vanish and the figureless will be known; death will cease to be and
the door to the deathless will open. But the center from where it is seen is closed at the moment.

How to activate that center?

As I said, the light bulb remains inactive so long as the electric current does not reach it. You reach
the current and the bulb will be alive. The bulb is always waiting for the current to reach it. But the
electric current cannot appear on its own, even if it is racing through the wire; it needs the bulb too.

Both the current and the bulb are equally needed for the light to become manifest. The life-force is
within us, but it cannot manifest itself unless it reaches that center which can make manifestation
possible.

We are alive only in name. Do you think that just breathing is life? Do you think that digesting food
is life? Does life only consist of going to bed in the night and leaving it in the morning? Is it life that
a child grows into youth and old age and then dies? Does life comprise only birth and death? Or is
it just leaving a few children behind oneself?

No, even machines can do it. If not today, tomorrow the machines are going to do it. Children will
be born in test tubes. Childhood, youth and old age are mechanical processes. When a machine is
made, it passes through its youth and old age. Every machine has its childhood, youth and old age.

Even when you buy a watch it comes with a guarantee that it will run for ten years or so. The watch
will be young and old and then die. Every machine is born, it lives and it dies. So what we ordinarily
call life is nothing more than a machine.

Life is a very different thing.

If this dead bulb does not know of the electric current, it would think that, as it is, is life. When a
gust of wind pushes it about it will say, ”I am alive because I am being pushed about.” The bulb will
take it to be its life. But what will the bulb say, if it can speak, when the electric current reaches it for
the first time? It will say, ”It is just indescribable! I don’t know what it is that has happened to me.

Until a moment ago I was filled with darkness, and now it is all light and the rays are flowing in all
directions.” What would a seed say the day it grows into a tree? It would say, ”I don’t know what has
happened to me. It cannot be said. I was a tiny seedling, and now I don’t know what has happened
to me. And it is equally difficult to say that it has happened through me.”

Therefore, those who realize God do not say that they themselves have realized, they only say that
they don’t find any connection between what they had been and what they have become. They say,

”Now it is all light where it was all darkness before. We were all thorns; now we are all blooming
flowers. Then we were frozen with death, now we are flowing with life. No, no,” they will say, ”we
have not realized, we have not realized.” Those who know will say, ”It is all his grace; it has happened
to us through his grace and not through our efforts.”

But it does not mean that effort has no place. It is true that when you realize God you feel that it is
his grace, but to reach to that grace, a journey of great effort is needed. And what is that effort?

In one sense the effort is small, but in another sense it is very great. It is small in the sense that
the center is not very far. The distance between the place where the energy is stored and the spot
where the eyes open with which you see life is not much. It is hardly a distance of two or three feet.

After all, we are only five to six feet in height. So our whole life structure is limited within five to six
feet; the whole set up is confined in this small area.

The space where the life force is stored is like a kunda, a pool near the sex center; that is why the
energy is known as kundalini, as if it is a kunda or pool of water. Another reason it is called kundalini
is that it looks like a snake coiled and sleeping. If you have seen a sleeping serpent you know how
it lies in coils with its hood on top. But if you disturb the sleeping serpent it will wake up, uncoil and
raise its hood up. This energy is called kundalini also because the pool of life-force, or the seed of
life is precisely located near the sex center and it is from here that life expands in all directions.

It will be good to remember that the small pleasure that we derive from sex is not the pleasure of sex,
it really comes from the vibrations arising in the pool of vital energy along with sex. The sleeping
serpent is slightly moved by the sex act and we consider it to be the whole pleasure of life. We
are not at all aware of what happens when the whole serpent is awakened and it travels across our
entire being and reaches the ultimate center in the brain. We are completely unaware of it.

We live on the first step of the ladder of life. There are other steps, greater steps, that lead to
God. The small distance of two to three feet that is there in our body is in another sense a very big
distance; it is the distance between nature and God, between matter and soul, between sleep and
wakefulness, between death and immortality. That distance is very long. But there is also a small
distance inside our being which we can traverse in meditation.

If you have to awaken the energy that is lying asleep in you, you should know well that it is not
less dangerous than trying to disturb and awaken a sleep ing serpent. In fact, disturbing a sleeping
serpent is not that dangerous. It is not dangerous because in the first place ninety seven percent of
snakes are not poisonous at all. So you can easily play with ninety seven out of a hundred snakes;
they are harmless. And if ever someone dies from their bite, he dies not because of the bite really,
but because of the thought of being bitten by a snake. These snakes are not poisonous, so ninety
seven out of a hundred snakes do not kill anybody, although many people die of their bite. They
die because of their belief that one has to die after being bitten by a snake.

And when a belief
grips anyone, it becomes a reality. Playing with really poisonous snakes too, is not so dangerous,
because at the worst they can deprive you of your body. But playing with the kundalini power, which
I am talking about, is dangerous indeed; there is nothing more dangerous than this. No danger can
be greater than this. But what is the danger?

This too is a kind of death. If the energy within is awakened, you will die as you are right now and
a totally new individual will be born – an individual that you never were before awakening. And it is
this fear that prevents people from becoming religious. It is the same fear which, if it grips a seed,
prevents it from becoming a tree. Now the greatest danger facing a seed is that it will be buried in
the soil, it will be treated with water and manure and then it will die as a seed. It is again the same
danger that faces an egg when it grows and breaks its shell. Then it has to die as an egg so that it
becomes a bird. In the same way we are in the preceding state of something yet to be born. We are
like an egg which is going to become a bird. But we take the egg to be everything and nestle down
in it.

When this energy will rise, you will be no more; there is no way for you to survive. And if you get
frightened, your fate will be what Kabir describes in a beautiful couplet. Kabir has said a beautiful
thing. He says, ”He alone found it who sought it by diving deep in the sea.

But I proved myself a fool
as I kept sitting on the seashore, although I had been there seeking.” When someone asked Kabir
why he remained sitting, he said, ”He alone found it who sought it by diving deep in the sea. But I
proved myself a fool as I, afraid of being drowned, kept sitting on the seashore.”

Whoever has found it has done so by seeking it in the depths. What is essential is a readiness to be
drowned, a readiness to disappear. If it has to be said in one word – though it is not a happy word
– it is death, readiness for death. And he who will be afraid of being drowned will of course survive,
but he will only survive as an egg; he will never become a bird on the wing.

He who will fear being
drowned will of course survive, but he will only survive as a seed; he will never become a tree under
whose shade thou sands of travelers may relax. But is it worthwhile to survive as a seed? It would
be worse than death really.

So there is great danger. The danger is that the person that I was till yesterday will not survive;
when the energy will be awakened it will totally transform me. New centers will be awakened, a new
individuality will emerge, new experiences will happen – everything will be new. If you are prepared
for the new then you must gather courage to part with the old.

But the old has gripped us so firmly in every way, it has fettered us so strongly, that the vital energy
cannot raise its head, cannot rise upward.

The journey to God is really a journey into in security. But the flowers of life and beauty only bloom in
insecurity. So I should tell you a few important things about this journey, and a few not so important.

First, I hope that when we meet here tomorrow morning and start on a journey of awakening the life
force, you will stake everything and withhold nothing. This is not going to be a small gamble. He
alone will win who stakes his all. If you withhold even a little you will lose it.

It is not possible for a
seed to save a part of itself as a seed and allow the rest to become a tree. If the seed dies, it dies
totally, and if it saves itself it does so totally. There is nothing like a partial death. So if you withhold
even a bit of yourself the whole labor will be wasted. Please let go of yourself completely, totally.

Many times, as one holds back in the slightest, everything is lost.
I have heard that when gold mines were discovered in Colorado for the first time, the whole of
America rushed there. News had spread that if you buy a piece of land you will find gold there.

People started buying land in Colorado. A multi-millionaire sold out his whole property and bought
an entire hill in Colorado with the money. And he installed huge machines to mine gold. While small
people were busy mining gold on their tiny bits of land, this man staked large scale mining on a
whole mountain with the help of high technology.

He and his men worked hard, but there was no trace of gold. And then he panicked, because he
had staked his entire fortune on this adventure. He was so much scared that he told his family that
they were ruined. He had squandered his entire fortune and gold was nowhere to be seen.

Then he advertised in the newspapers that he wanted to sell his hill, along with all the machines and
instruments of mining. His family members said, ”But who is going to buy them? Everybody has
come to know that the mountain has no gold and that you have wasted millions for nothing. He will
be a madman who will agree to buy it.” But the man said, ”Who knows? There may be another like
me.”

And a buyer really came forward. The multi-millionaire felt like warning the person who had offered
to buy his hill that he was in for a mad adventure. But he could not gather courage, because of the
thought of the consequences if the hill was not sold. So the hill was at last sold. But after the deal
was completed he told the buyer, ”You seem to be a real madman. Don’t you see that I am selling
the hill after it has ruined me?” The other man said, ”You cannot say how life is going to be. Maybe
there was no gold as far as you dug the hill, but how can you say that there is no gold even where
you did not dig?” And the multi-millionaire nodded his head saying, ”That I cannot say.”

And the wonder happened, as it happens some times. The gold mine was found just one foot
below the surface where the previous owner had left off digging. The previous owner was now twice
as miserable when he learned that the whole hill was full of gold. He visited the new owner and
congratulated him on his good luck. But the man said, ”It is not a question of good luck. You did not
give of yourself totally to it. You turned back before you had done enough digging. You should have
gone deeper.”

Things like this happen every day in life. I know any number of people who go to find God – but they
don’t go the whole length or they don’t give of them selves wholly to it, and face disappointment.

Many times they miss the divine by just an inch; when God was only an inch away, they turned back.
And at times I see clearly how a seeker turns back when he had almost made it.

So remember that you will not spare yourself even a bit and that you will stake your all. And do we
have much really that we can pay for God? But we are miserly even in this.

No, miserliness will not
do. There is no place for the miser at the door of the di vine. There we will have to stake everything.

It is not that we have much that we can give. What we have is not the question. The question is
whether or not we have staked our all. Because as soon as we stake our all we touch the center
where the life force resides and from where it begins to move upward. But why do I insist on a total
stake?

In fact, it is only when we have pressed all our energy into meditation that there arises the need for
the reserves of energy lying in the reservoir, to wake up and come to our aid.

It is only then that the
life force begins to rise, and not before. Until then it lies asleep in the kunda, in the pool. So long as
there is even a part of our own energy left unused, we have to depend on it.

The reserve forces in
us come to be used only when we have no energy left. It is only then that life force is needed. The
center is activated only when we have staked our all. Only then it becomes urgent to draw energy
from the reservoir, from the center, not otherwise.

For example, I ask you to run and you begin to run. Then I ask you to run with all your strength and
you run with added strength. In reality you have not yet put all your strength into running, although
you think that you are running with all your strength. Tomorrow you have to take part in a long
running competition, and then you find that you are running faster than before, that your speed has
increased. It is because of the competition that you run with full energy. But even this is not total.

Tomorrow somebody pursues you with a gun in his hand, and you run with the greatest speed ever.
Even you are surprised, you did not know that you could run so fast. Now you are running for your
life. Where is this energy coming from? This energy too, is your own energy that was lying asleep
in you.

But even this energy is not enough for meditation. Even when you run for your life, being pursued
by a gunman, you are not running with your entire might. In meditation you will need to stake much
more than this. You will have to stake your utmost. And the moment you touch the point where your
entire energy is pressed into action, you will find that you are connected with some other energy,
that some hidden energy within you has started waking up.

For sure, you will experience the awakening of this extraordinary energy. It is like you have suddenly
contacted some electric current. You will feel that some energy within you, lying low at the sex
center, has started rising upward. This energy is hot like a laming fire, and at the same time it is
cool like the morning breeze. It is like a harsh prick of thorns and at the same time it is as soft as a
flower.

And many things will happen when that energy will be rising upward. Please don’t withhold yourself
at any point when the energy is moving upward. Let go of yourself completely, like a man leaves
himself in the hands of the river and just floats with its current. In short, ”let go” is the key.

Now the second thing. First you have to stake your all; and when as a result of this total stake
something happens to you, then you have to leave yourself fully in the hands of that ”something”.

This is the second thing. Let go of yourself; just float as one floats on the surface of the water. Just
floating. You should be ready to go wheresoever the current of the river takes you. It is true that
to a certain extent we have to provoke it, but when the energy is awakened, we have just to leave
ourselves in its hands, we have to let go of ourselves. Higher forces have taken over, we need not
worry anymore. We have to just float.

And third, with the upward rise of this energy many things will happen. Please see that you don’t get
scared when they happen, because new experiences are frightening. When a child is born, when he
comes out of his mother’s cozy womb, he gets frightened. Psychologists call it a trauma, a traumatic
experience, an experience which a child will never forget, which will haunt him for the whole of his
life. The child’s fear of the new begins with his birth; because he had lived in complete security in the
mother’s womb for nine months. He had no worries whatsoever; he did not have to breathe, or eat
or cry or do anything for him self; the mother did everything. The child was in a state of absolute rest
and comfort. Coming out of the mother’s womb he encounters a new and strange world altogether.

This is the first shock of life, and it is here, at the very doorstep of life that fear grips him.

That is why everybody fears the new; they cling to the old and fear the new. It is the first experience
of our life that the new puts us in great trouble. Mother’s womb was a much better place than
this world. That is why most of our contrivances that we use in daily living are fashioned after the
mother’s womb. Our cushions, sofas, cars, living rooms are all modeled after the mother’s womb.

We try to make them as cozy and comfortable as the womb, but we do not really succeed. So the
first experience after coming from mother’s womb is one of fear of the new.
The experience of the awakening of the kundalini, the primordial energy, is a new experience greater
than the child’s, because while the childbirth happens only at the level of the body, the awakening of
the kundalini happens at the level of the soul. It is therefore, a totally new birth. It is for this reason
that we call him a brahmin who goes through this experience. brahmin is he who is twice born. He
is also called dwij – one who is twice born.

So when that energy awakens, a second birth happens. In this birth you are both – you are the moth
er and you are the child. You alone are both together. Therefore you will have to go through double
suffering – the pains of childbirth and the trauma of insecurity, together. For this reason it can be
a frightening experience. Apart from the trauma of insecurity you will also have to go through the
pains of childbirth as the mother does, because here you are the mother and the child combined in
one. You are born, but there is no separate mother and there is no separate child. You are taking
birth, and you are also giving birth; your birth is happening through you. So the pains can be very
severe and intense.

I have received complaints that someone cries and screams and shouts during meditation and that
he should be restrained from doing so. No, let him cry and scream and shout.

He alone knows
what is happening to him in his inside. A woman is crying while giving birth to a child and another
woman, who has never known childbirth, comes along and says, ”Why do you cry and scream? If
the child is taking birth, let him. Why weep and groan?” Such a woman can say so, because she
has never gone through the pangs of childbirth. Men will never know the pains which women have
to bear during childbirth. They cannot even think of it; there is no way for them to have a feel of it.

But in meditation men and women are alike; in a sense they all are going to be mothers. They are
going to give birth to the new. So pain and anguish need not be suppressed.

It is not necessary to
restrain someone if he falls and rolls on the ground and screams and shouts.

Whatever happens
should be allowed to happen freely. Let go of it; don’t suppress it. Any kinds of experiences are
possible. Someone may feel that he is levitating, and another may feel that he is expanding, and
yet another may feel that he is shrinking. Diverse kinds of new experiences are possible; I need not
enumerate them. Many things can happen; anything new can happen, and each one’s experience
will be different. So one need not worry and get scared.

And if anybody has something to say he should see me at noon and talk to me individually. Don’t
discuss it among yourselves. And there is a reason for not discussing it among yourselves. It
is not necessary that what happens to one should happen to others too. And if you share your
experiences with someone who did not have the same experiences he will laugh and say that you
are crazy. Every man is his own measure; that is why everyone thinks that he is right and others are
wrong. Even if the other person does not laugh at you, he will tell you distrustfully that he did not
experience anything like it.

This experience is so personal and subjective that it is better not to discuss it with any other person.

One should not confide even in one’s wife or husband, because no two persons are very close and
intimate in this respect. And in this respect no one can understand the other easily; understanding
is so difficult in this case. Anyone can say that you are crazy. Let alone you, they will not spare a
Jesus and a Mahavira. The day Mahavira stood naked on the road, he must have been declared
mad. Mahavira knew what it meant to him to be naked, but he was declared mad.

It is, therefore, necessary that you don’t discuss it with others. Moreover, as soon as you speak to
anyone, he is not going to have the wisdom to keep quiet; he will immediately say something. And
this ”something” can come in the way of your experience itself. His remarks can work as suggestions
and it can be an obstacle in the way of your new experience. So what ever happens to you, you
should discuss it with me directly, and not with anyone else. I am here so that you can discuss your
problems with me.

Before you come here for meditation tomorrow morning, you can take some liquids like tea and milk,
but no solid food. Don’t eat your breakfast. Tea, milk or any liquid can do. If one can do without tea
and milk also, it would be better; it will make the work on meditation easier. And you should reach
here five minutes before the scheduled time, 7:30 a.m.

Between 7:30 and 8:30 we will have a discussion if necessary. I have decided on a discussion rather
than a discourse, because a discourse is a very impersonal affair. In discourse you don’t seem to be
talking to anybody; it is like talking to the winds. So you will sit very close to me tomorrow morning,
and not at a distance. Be as close to me as possible. And you can ask any questions on what I have
said today and we will discuss them for an hour. And then we will sit for meditation between 8:30
and 9:30.

Remember that you come to meditation with an empty stomach – without taking any solid food. If
you can do even without liquid, it would be better. But don’t force yourself to be hungry; if you cannot
fast, then take something like tea or milk.

Also remember that you come in loose clothes and properly bathed. No one should come without
bathing; bathing is a must. And the clothes should be as loose as possible, should not be tight at
all, not even at the waistline. Along with the rest of the body, the waistline too, should have loose
fittings. And while sitting for meditation keep your whole body loose and relaxed.

Even our clothes have done a lot of mischief at the level of our body mind; they have created any
number of obstacles. When some energy begins to rise upward the clothes put obstacles in its way
at various levels.

Another important thing to remember is that you should go into silence a half hour before meditation
will begin. Some friends, who can, should observe silence for these three days that we are here.

They should be in complete silence. And other friends should see to it that they are not disturbed in
their silence. The greater the number of people going into silence, the better. And it would be good
if one could be silent throughout the camp time. Nothing would be better.

If you cannot go completely silent, then see that you speak as little as possible. Use as few words as
possible, as you do in telegraphic messages. While sending messages by telegraph you do with the
mini mum number of words – say ten or eight words – be cause you have to pay for each word. Even
in life you have to pay for every word that you say; words are really costly.

So those who cannot go
into complete silence should do with the minimum number of spoken words.

In the same way, use of the sense organs should be reduced to the minimum. For example, use
your eyes less and less. When using them lower the sight to the earth or raise it upward and see the
sky. Watch the sea. But as far as men and women are concerned see as little of them as possible.

Because most of our mental associations are formed of human faces, not of trees, clouds and seas.

Look at the trees and the clouds and the seas; they don’t give rise to any thoughts in you. Human
faces, on the other hand, immediately stir all kinds of thoughts in your mind. While walking, lower
your gaze and keep it confined to a distance of four feet from you. And keep your eyes only half
open so they concentrate on the tip of your nose. That is enough. And help others that they see and
hear as little as possible.

Things like radios and transistors should be shut down; they should not be used during the camp.

And don’t allow newspapers to enter the campus.

The more rest you let your senses have, the better. The more rest you have the more energy
you conserve, which can be used in meditation; otherwise you will exhaust yourselves. Most of
us are exhausted and spent, like spent cartridges. We spend ourselves completely in twenty four
hours; we save nothing. What little we save during the night’s sleep, we start squandering right
after leaving the bed in the morning. Going through the newspapers and listening to the radio, the
squandering begins. We have no idea of what conservation of energy means, how a lot of energy
can be conserved.
Meditation will need much energy. So if you don’t conserve it, you will soon get tired and exhausted.

Some people tell me that they tire after an hour’s meditation. But it is not meditation that is
responsible for it. The real reason is that you have squandered all your energy and that you live
on the point of exhaustion. You have no idea that you spend energy when you just focus your eyes
and see a thing. When you tune your ears to hear something you again spend energy. Even when
you think, energy is being spent. And energy is also spent when you speak.

Whatever we do, it
costs energy. In the night, how ever, we save some energy, because other activities are suspended
– although a little energy is spent even in dreaming. But this is a different thing. A little energy is
saved in the night however, and that is how we feel fresh in the morning.

So for these three days you have to conserve energy so that it may be wholly used for meditation.

I am giving you all these instructions so that for the coming three days I may not have to say them
again.

We have on our schedule an hour of silence in the afternoon; during that hour there will be no talk.

During discourse I communicate with you through words; during the hour between three and four I
will communicate with you through silence. So all of you will be present here by 3 p.m.; no one will
come after three. People coming late will be a kind of disturbance; they will be really harmful. I will
be sitting here, but what will you do between three and four?

Two things have to be kept in mind. One: that each one of you will sit at a place from where I can
be seen. Not that you have to look at me, but you must find a place for yourself from where I can be
visible. Then you will close your eyes. If any of you prefer to keep your eyes open, you can do so.
But it would be good if you keep your eyes closed.

This hour of silence will be just a waiting for the unknown. You don’t know who will come, and yet
he will come. You don’t know what you will hear, and yet you will hear. You don’t know what you will
see, and yet you will see. You will sit silently for an hour, just awaiting the unknown guest whom you
have never seen and heard. You may sit or lie down as you would like. But be receptive, become
receptivity itself, for a whole hour. Be passive, but receptive to that which is, or is going to happen.

Let it just happen. Be passive but alert and awaiting, wakefully awaiting. And through silence I will
try to communicate to you what I have to say. You may, perhaps, understand through silence what
you don’t understand through words.

Again at night I will answer any questions that you may have to ask. And then again an hour of
meditation will follow.

We are, thus, going to have nine sittings in the course of three days. And right from tomorrow morn
ing you should begin exerting your all so that by the ninth, the last sitting, you will have really exerted
your all.

But what are you going to do in your spare hours?
You have to be silent. A lot of trouble is removed just by avoiding conversations. There is the beach,
go and lie down on the beach and listen to the waves. Even at night those of you who can should
go to the beach with your bedding and sleep quietly on the sands. You can sleep under the trees
as well. But be alone, don’t form groups of friends and families. It is just possible that a few people
will form groups and fool around. Keep away from them and live alone. Know that for these three
days each one of you is all alone here. Because if you are going to meet with God, you can only go
alone; no one will walk with you. Each one of you should know that you are the lonely pilgrim and
you have to go it alone. It is a journey of the alone to the alone. So be alone – alone to the greatest
extent.

And now remember this last instruction: don’t grumble, don’t complain about anything. Stop
complaining for three days. Don’t grumble if the food is bad. Don’t grouch if mosquitoes bite you at
night. For three days let there be total acceptance of all that may happen.

Mosquitoes will of course
gain something, but you will gain more, much more. If the food is not right it will harm your body a
little, but it will harm you a lot if you grumble about it. And there are reasons for it – a complaining
mind is never at peace. Our complaints are petty, but what we lose is too much. So don’t grumble;
for three days know it clearly that you will not grumble at all. What is, is.

Howsoever it is, is. Accept
it absolutely. Then these three days will be wonderful. If for these three days you stay above petty
matters, if you accept everything as it is and delight in it, then you will cease to have any com plaints
for the rest of your life. Because then you will know how peaceful and joyous it is to live without
grudging.

For three days give up all petty matters.
If you have any questions you can bring them tomorrow morning. And when you ask a question,
remember that it is something of common interest. You can ask anything that comes from your heart
and mind and that you think to be necessary.
I told you why I am here. I don’t know why you are here; but I will meet you tomorrow morning in
the hope that you are here for the same reasons as I am. Ordinarily our habits are very ugly. Even
when a Buddha appears at our door we feel like telling him to go away, because we assume that
everyone comes to ask for something. So we forget that, and when someone comes to give we tell
him too to go away. Thus a grave mistake is made. A grave mistake indeed! I hope that you will not
make the same mistake.
These three days you have to create a milieu here so that something real can happen. And it is
possible. And it depends on each one of you to create such a milieu. In three days this entire forest
of pines can be charged with mysterious energies. All the trees, each grain of sand, the ocean and
the air, can be filled with a new life force. And all of us can cooperate in its creation.

And remember, nobody should put obstructions in its way. No one who is here should be just an
onlooker. And drop all fear of what others will say. Then alone we can reach the supreme. And then
you will not have to repeat Kabir’s words, and you can say, ”I did not fear and I took a jump.”

I am grateful to you for having silently heard me with such love. I bow down to God dwelling in each
one of you. Please accept my salutation.

:)
Your mind is constant!y hijacking you from the present moment — either Into the past or into the future, but it never allows you to be now, to be here.

By infinite patience is meant that “I trust, I am not worried. I am not rushing for tomorrow. I will rest in this moment. I will allow this moment its totality. I will explore this moment with my totality.”

Then immediately, without even a second in between, something wells up within you, something overwhelms you: a kind of music, a kind of melody, a feeling of well-being, as if everything is as it should be, you are at home, nothing is needed, all is perfect.

That feeling is bliss — that everything else as it is, is right; it is absolutely okay, it cannot be better. That feeling is bliss, but that feeling is possible only when you relax, are patient, unhurried. And that’s what meditation is all about.

Sannyas is nothing but a style of life, of living moment to moment, without hankering for the future… just living the present so totally that the mind has no time, no space, to go anywhere else… so absorbed, so utterly involved, drunk, with the present.---OSHO

lonestar

30-04-2012, 07:05 PM

i likey. :D

heartbeatsalute

30-04-2012, 10:37 PM

i likey. :D

:D:)

heartbeatsalute

30-04-2012, 10:58 PM

I have heard:

Once a psychologist dropped a frog in a pail of boiling water.

Instantly the frog jumped out of it. He was placed in the same situation in which Arjuna is! Since the water was boiling , the poor frog could not
adjust himself to it - so he jumped out.

Later, the same psychologist put the frog in a different
pail of water and began to heat it up´slowly. He brought it
tO a boiling point in twenty-four hours. As he kept
on warming the water very gradually the frog went on
accepting it - just as we all do. The water became a little
warmer and the frog too became a little warmer. The frog thought
there was no real need to jump out; that it could be endured.

So he went on adjusting himself - just as we all do.

In twenty - four hours he became fully adjusted. By the time
the water did boil the frog remained adjusted becasue he did not notice
any difference - the water temperature has risen bit by bit and
there was nothing drastic between any two succesively rising bits
that could mke him feel the need to jump.

The frog went on accepting it, bit by bit. He died. The
water kept on boiling, he got boiled in it, but he didn't jump.

The frog could have jumped - there is nothing more natural for a frog than to jump - but he couldn't even manage that.

CAN YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL QUESTION,
"WHO AM I?" AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA OF "WHO AM I?"?

Prem Shunyo, it is exactly the difference I was just talking about -- the difference between the ego and
the self.

The ego is your false idea of who you are; it is just a fabrication of the mind. It is your own homemade
mind-manufactured concept, but it has no corresponding reality to it. It is perfectly good as far as the world
is concerned because there, you are dealing with other egos. The moment you go beyond your mind, you
also go beyond your ego, and suddenly you realize that you are not what you have always thought yourself
to be -- that your reality is totally different, that it does not consist of your body or of your mind, that in fact
you don't have any word to express it.

But it is still not the ultimate reality; it is just in between, between the ultimate reality and the ultimate
falsehood. It is better than the false, but it is lower than the really real. You are still carrying a certain idea
of separation from existence. That separation keeps you unavailable to all the blessings which are your
birthright. If you can drop those walls and open yourself to the immensity of reality, you will disappear as a
separate entity.

But this is only one side. On the other side you will appear as the eternal, the immense, the vast reality --
the oceanic experience, which is the only experience of enlightenment or liberation.

You have to get rid of the ego first. That is your psychological trauma, or better, your psychological
drama. There are religions which have accepted the false ego as the end of all, there is nothing beyond it.

That is the religion of all the atheists of different trends, a communist. Or the atheist may not be a
communist, but the atheist in any form stops himself at the ego; that is his ultimate reality.

He is the poorest man in the world. All other religions except atheism... because I take atheism also as a
sort of religion, a lower form of religion than other religions. Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, go a
step further. They all insist to drop the ego and to recognize your authentic reality, your real self.

But there are religions like Zen which go to the very end of the road. They are not satisfied just by
dropping the ego. They are satisfied only when there is nothing left to drop -- even the self is gone -- when
the house is absolutely empty, when you can say, "I am not."

This nothingness is creating the space for the ultimate to blossom. It does not come from anywhere else.

It has always been there, just cluttered with rotten furniture, with unnecessary things. As you remove all
those things and your subjectivity becomes empty -- just as a room becomes empty as you remove
everything from it -- in this emptiness of your subjectivity, blossoms the flower of ultimate experience --
you are no more.

Naturally, you cannot have your old miseries, your old traumas and dramas. You cannot have any
connection with your own past; you have abruptly cut yourself away from all that you used to be. Suddenly
a new, totally fresh opening... in a way, you disappear. In a way your authentic essence has the first
opportunity to come into its full glory, into its absolute splendor.

This is what enlightenment is. It is a negative process: negate the ego, the psychological; negate the self,
the spiritual. Go on negating until nothing remains to negate -- and the explosion! Suddenly you have
arrived home, with the revelation that you have never been out of your home. You have always been there,
your eyes were just focused on objects.

Now all those objects have disappeared. Only a witnessing, pure awareness, has remained. This
witnessing is the end of all your misery and all your hell. It is also the beginning of the golden gate -- the
doors are open for the first time.

Two white rats were chatting through the bars of their laboratory cages. "Tell me," said the first white
rat, "how are you getting along with Dr. Smith?"

"Just fine," replied the second rat. "It took a while, but I have finally got him trained. Now, whenever I
ring the bell, he brings me my dinner."

It is such a strange world. The psychologist, Dr. Smith, must be thinking he is training rats, and the rats
are thinking they are training Dr. Smith! The games of the ego... The wife thinks she is training the husband.

All wives are training their husbands their whole lives; the husbands are training their wives. It seems life is
just to train and to be trained -- for what?

A woman reached Pablo Picasso. She wanted a portrait; the portrait was made. She was absolutely
satisfied. She said, "Just one thing, you have forgotten to put great diamonds around my neck, a great
diamond ring, diamond bracelets."

Picasso said, "But you don't have them." She said, "It doesn't matter. I have cancer, and I am not going
to survive more than six weeks. And I know my husband is going to marry immediately after I die. He is
just waiting for my death, although he goes on saying, `My dear, without you I will not be able to live a
single moment.' I know that without me he will not be able to live a single moment. He will immediately
find another woman!"

Picasso said, "I don't understand the relationship of what you are saying and the diamonds."

She said, "You don't understand the woman's mind. I want my portrait, after my death, to be seen by the
woman who my husband is going to marry. Then she will torture him, `Where are these diamonds?' I cannot
leave him, even if I am dead. He has to be trained, he has to be kept under control." Great idea!

People have forgotten completely to live. Who has time? Everybody is training everybody else, how to
be -- and nobody seems to be satisfactory, never.

If one wants to live, one should learn one thing, to accept things as they are, and to accept yourself as
you are. Start living. Don't start training for a life sometime in the future. All the misery in the world is
created because you have completely forgotten to live; you have become engaged in an activity which has
nothing to do with life.

The moment you are married to a man, you start training him to be faithful.

Live while he is faithful -- it
will not be more than two weeks; two weeks is the human limit! Live as deeply as possible -- perhaps your
living and loving deeply may help him to remain faithful the third week also. And never project too much;
three weeks is enough.

My own experience is that if you have lived three weeks lovingly, the fourth week will follow. But you
start disturbing things from the first moment. Before you start living, training is needed; you spoil the time
by training, and a man who could have loved you for at least two weeks becomes bored within two days.

One woman never married. And when she was dying, a friend asked, "Why have you never married?
You are so beautiful."

She said, "What is the need? As far as training is concerned I train my dog, and he never learns! Every
day I am training and he still comes home late in the night. I have a parrot who tells me everything a
husband is expected to say. In the morning he says, "Hello darling!" I have a servant who steals, who
continuously lies. What need have I for a husband? Everything is being fulfilled." A husband is needed for
these things?

A wife is needed, not to have an experience of intimacy and love, but to make an exhibition of her; just
to show around the neighborhood and make everybody jealous that you have such a beautiful woman. Load
her with all the ornaments and make everybody jealous of your richness; otherwise, how are you going to
show your richness? A wife is a show-window; she shows your achievements, your power. Naturally, you
have to train her how to become more social, how to help you in your businesses.

The saying seems to be perfect that behind the success of every great man there is a woman -- in many
different senses. Sometimes just to escape from her, one becomes madly engaged in earning money.

When Henry Ford was asked, "Why did you go on earning and earning, when you have earned so much?
It was time to enjoy and relax."

He said, "That was not the reason for earning. I was engaged in earning first to escape from my wife,
and secondly, I became interested in whether I can earn more or she can spend more." A competition, a
lifelong competition!

People get involved in strange dramas. Very few people live authentically -- they just act.

A man is sitting in a cinema, and the wife is continually reminding him how the hero is showing his love
so deeply to his wife. Finally, the husband says, "Stop all this nonsense! You don't know how much he's
paid for it! And moreover, it is only acting; it is not reality. I will certainly say he is a good actor."

The wife said, "Perhaps you are not aware that in actual life also they are wife and husband."

He said, "My God! If that is true, then he is the greatest actor I have ever seen; otherwise, even on the
stage, to show so much love to your own wife is simply beyond human capacity. He is almost a genius as
far as acting is concerned."

People think love is only for actors. It has been noted by psychoanalysts that people are sitting in front
of their TV's for hours. An American watches TV six hours per day on average -- that is the average. There
may be few maniacs watching nine hours, ten hours, twelve hours. Slowly slowly, watching movies,
watching television, watching a football match, watching a tournament, people have simply become
observers; they don't love. Some actor loves -- they simply watch. They don't play; some professional
players play -- they watch. They don't do anything; they are glued to their chairs and are just watching
everything. But watching and doing are totally different. They feel completely satisfied that they have seen
a beautiful film on love. They are completely satisfied that they have seen a great boxing tournament. And
they themselves are just onlookers.

It is something of a great calamity that has reduced millions of people to onlookers. And the people who
are being watched are actors. They are not in real love, they are being paid for it. They are experts in
deceiving people, pretending that what they are doing is real. Their tears are false, their smiles are false,
their love is false, their anger is false. What kind of world have we created?

The doers are all acting because
they are paid for it, and the remaining nondoing world is simply watching.
You are here to live.

You are here to dance.
You are here to experience life.

Others are doing it for you. On your behalf people are loving, people are playing, people are doing all
kinds of things. And what is left for you? -- just to watch. Death will not be able to take much from you --
only your television, because you don't have anything else.

This is the false ego that has created a false life pattern and lifestyle.
Drop everything false.
Be authentic and true; that is the first step. And once you are authentic and true, you will see how
beautiful it is. And that will create the longing to go beyond, in search of the ultimate truth, the final
statement and the final experience, beyond which nothing else exists.

A famous surgeon went on safari to Africa. When he came back his colleagues asked him how it had
been. "Ah, it was very disappointing," he said, "I didn't kill a thing. I would have been better off staying
here in the hospital!"

Fifteen minutes after the Titanic sank, Morie and Louis find themselves on the same overturned raft.

The water is freezing, sharks are cruising by, and the raft is slowly sinking. "Ah well," said Louis, "it could
have been worse."

"Worse? How could it be worse?" screamed Morie.
"Well, we could have bought return tickets!"

People are almost crazy -- a tremendous cleansing is needed -- and most of their insanity is because of
their false life; it is not satisfying. False food cannot be nourishment, false water cannot quench your thirst,
and false ego cannot give you real life. It is simple arithmetics.

Just watch yourself and you will not find a single self in you
but many selves. You are multi-psychic, you have many minds,
and each mind is fighting with the other minds. There is a great
competition inside you, a continual quarrel.

And in that quarrel, in that conflict, you are dissipating energy;
and when you dissipate energy in constant civil war you lose the
zest for life. You lose every possibility of being ecstatic, you lose joy.

William Blake is right when he says, 'Energy is delight'.

That's a very profound statement. Yes, energy is delight,
and the greater your energy, the greater your delight. It is
energy that becomes delight; overflowing energy is delight,
overflowing energy is celebration. When energy is dancing
in you, in uninson,in deep harmony, in rhytm and flow,
you become a blessing to the world.

BY USING MODERN TECHNOLOGY, I FEEL WE ARE HURTING THIS VIBRATING, JUICY EARTH
WITH THE DEAD GARBAGE OF PLASTIC, RADIOACTIVITY, BAD AIR AND SO ON.
PLEASE WOULD YOU COMMENT.

Dhyan Tara, it is one of the most complicated questions.... It is true that, ”by using modern
technology we are hurting this vibrating, juicy earth with the dead garbage of plastic, radioactivity,
bad air and so on.”

This question has two possible answers. One is that of Mahatma Gandhi: ”Go back... to the point
where all modern technology is dropped” – which superficially looks right. If modern technology is
creating an ecological crisis on the earth, disturbing the balance of nature, then it is a very simplistic
solution to drop modern technology and go back.

But you have to understand that in Gautam Buddha’s time, just twenty-five centuries ago, this country
only had twenty million people. The earth was enough to support them.

Today, this country alone
has nine hundred million people. If you want to go back to the days of Gautam Buddha, you will
have to kill or allow to die such a large part of the population. And when only twenty million people
are saved, and the remainder of the nine hundred million people are lying dead all around you – do
you think those twenty million will be able to live either?

And the population goes on increasing.... By the end of this century, the population of India may
have increased by half again. That means it would be one billion, three-hundred million people –
from nearly nine-hundred to thirteen-hundred million people.

That is why I have been disagreeing with Mahatma Gandhi on every point. He talks about
nonviolence – but this is not nonviolence; nothing can be more violent a step than this. No war
has destroyed so many people as will be destroyed without any war. And it is impossible to live
amongst dead bodies piled all around you. There will be nobody to take them to the funeral or to
take them to the graveyard. So many people dying at such a rate is going to kill the remaining twenty
million people too; their rotting bodies will create thousands of diseases, infections.

Mahatma Gandhi used to think that we should stop technology at the point where the spinning wheel
was invented. The spinning wheel was invented somewhere around ten thousand years ago or even
earlier. The people were so few and the earth was so big... the earth was giving so much that those
people could not even absorb it all; most of it was going to waste.

So this is one solution, which came to Mahatma Gandhi from Leo Tolstoy – he was also against
modern technology. But I cannot support it, because it means no railway trains, no hospitals, no
surgery, no medicine, no post offices, no telegraphs, no telegrams, no telexes, no electricity; and all
these have become part of your life. You cannot conceive of yourself without electricity!

There was just one failure of electricity in America. For three days people were in such a panic,
because the elevators were not working and to go by the stairs in a high-rise building – perhaps one
hundred stories, one hundred and twenty stories – just coming down and going up was enough to
finish anybody. People became aware for the first time, in those three days in New York, that now
there is no possibility of dropping technology.

I have another alternative. It is not the fault of modern technology; the fault is that we have not been
very clear what we want from modern technology and what we don’t want. The scientist has been
discovering almost in a blind way, and whatever he discovers we start using – without thinking of the
aftereffects.

Going back is impossible and idiotic, the only way is forward. We need a better technology – better
than modern technology, which can avoid plastic garbage and disturbance in the ecology. The
scientist has to be very alert that whatever he is doing should become an intrinsic part of the organic
whole; technology should not go against the whole. And it is possible, because technology does not
lead you somewhere in particular; it is you who go on discovering things in a blind way.

Now that it is clear that whatever we have discovered up to now, much of it is a disturbance in
the harmony – is finally going to destroy life on the earth – still, scientists go on piling up nuclear
weapons. They don’t have the guts to say to the politicians, ”It is enough.

We are not slaves. We
cannot create anything that is going to destroy life.”

All the scientists of the world have to come to a consensus: they have to make a world academy of
sciences, which decides what should be discovered and what should not be discovered. If something
wrong is discovered, it should be undiscovered immediately.

We need a superior technology, a more enlightened technology. There, I part from Mahatma Gandhi,
who goes backwards – where there is nothing but death. I go forwards.

Technology is in our hands;
we are not in the hands of technology. We can drop all those parts which are dangerous, poisonous,
and we can discover substitutes which enhance the ecology, which enhance the life of man, which
enhance his outer and inner richness and bring a balance into the world.

But I don’t see anybody in the whole world preaching for a more sophisticated, more enlightened
technology. Sometimes I wonder: millions of people, thousands of great scientists – are they all
blind? Can’t they see what they are doing is cutting their own roots?

And if technology can manage to do miracles – it has managed on the path of destructiveness, it can
also manage miracles on the path of creativeness. All that has been discovered, if it is a disturbance
to nature, should be dropped. But I don’t see that electricity is a danger to nature; I don’t see that
railway lines or airplanes are disturbing the ecology; I don’t see that innocent telegrams, post offices,
have to be destroyed. That will be moving to the other extreme.

That is how the human mind works: it works like the pendulum of a clock, from one end to the other
end. It never stops in the middle. I want human consciousness to stop exactly in the middle, so that
it can see both sides. Certainly, destructiveness cannot be supported; and the energy that goes into
creating destructive things has to be converted into creativity.
But Mahatma Gandhi is not the way. His ideology will prove more dangerous than modern
technology has proved. Modern technology may still take hundreds of years to destroy everything.

If we follow Mahatma Gandhi, within a day everything that we have achieved in thousands of years
will be destroyed.
You could not have cold and hot water in your bathrooms – that depends on modern technology.

It is true that it has polluted the air, but that is our fault, not the fault of modern technology. If we
had insisted that petrol should be refined to such a point that it did not pollute the air, and that there
should be devices which went on every car, to purify the air of whatever damage the petrol was
doing, so the balance remained the same.... but it was, in a way, natural. You know something only
when it has happened.

Nobody was aware that going to the moon was creating dangerous holes in the protective shield
around the earth. There is a subtle, invisible layer of ozone twenty miles above the earth, all around
it. This ozone layer has been protective. It does not allow all the rays of the sun to enter; it allows
only the rays which are helpful for life, for trees, for human beings – and the destructive rays are
turned back. But nobody was aware of it, so nobody can be blamed for it.

When our first rockets went beyond the twenty-mile thick atmosphere, they created holes in the
ozone layer; and from those holes, the protective layers disappeared. Now the all the rays of the
sun can enter through those holes, and they have brought many diseases which have not been
known before.

But now we can make arrangements if we want to go to the moon. In the first place, it is lunatic;
only people who are in some way mad want to go to the moon. For what? – there is neither water
nor greenery nor air to breathe. What is the point of it all? Perhaps military experts may be the only
ones who are deeply interested in acquiring the moon – because then the moon can be made a
base for throwing nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union, if America gets hold of the moon, or if the
Soviet Union gets hold of the moon, it becomes their territory.

But even if you want to go to the moon, you should be careful not to create these holes; and if
you are creating them, you should immediately make arrangements that they are covered again, so
destructive rays from the sun cannot reach the earth.

One thing has to be remembered, Tara: man can only go forward; there is no way backward. And
there is no point, either. It is just people’s imagination that in the past, when there was no technology,
everything was beautiful and good. That is absolutely wrong. I will give you a few examples.

Hindus brag very much that in the golden old days, people were so rich that locks were never used
on the doors. Yes, it is mentioned in the scriptures that locks were not used.

But it does not say that
people were so rich and there was no stealing around – hence, locks were not used. My conclusion
is just the opposite: locks were not invented yet, so how could they use them? Secondly, people
were very poor; there was nothing to lock up.

And if somebody says that people were rich and there were no locks and there was no stealing, then
they should look again into all the scriptures of the past. Gautam Buddha, every day for forty-two
years continually, was teaching that stealing is evil. I wonder whom he was teaching? If there was
no stealing happening – even locks were not needed – then he must have been mad, talking to
people who have never stolen and who were not going to steal, they were themselves so rich. Then
why did he go on, every day?

And it was not only Gautam Buddha; Mahavira went on doing the same, and other scriptures and
other masters of the past all insisted that stealing was a sin. That is enough proof that there were
thieves all around. So the only possible way to explain why locks were not used is mine: because
locks were not invented yet.

Locks are also part of technology. If you go to an aboriginal society living in the forest they don’t use
locks, because they cannot create locks and they are not rich enough even to purchase locks from
the cities. And for what? – because they don’t have anything in their houses.

If they can get one
meal a day, that is a great blessing from God. Most of them don’t get even one meal a day.

Technology should not be looked at only negatively. In India, just before this century, nine children
used to die out of ten. Today, the situation has reversed: only one child dies out of ten, because of
the advancement of medicine. The clothes you are wearing... soon it will be impossible to provide
cotton clothes for everybody – and there is no need either: better clothes can be produced by
technology. Just as a symbol of my philosophy, I never use anything that is cotton. My clothes are
pure productions of technology – one hundred percent polyester.

Technology can create better houses, lighter houses and more beautiful; there is no need to use
heavy material, costly material. Technology is bound to create better food, more proportionate,
giving you all the vitamins that are needed and giving you a better taste, too – now plants are not
so scientific. Any flavor can be given to your food. There is no need for people to eat meat just for
taste, because any food can be given the flavor of meat.

Technology has a better side also; but if you drop all modern technology, you will be falling into the
dark ages, and it will be the greatest violence on the earth, preached by the man who thought that
his philosophy was nonviolent.

But something has to be done. Up to now, technology has been just groping. Now we can give it a
direction; and we can drop all those things which are destructive of ecology, harmony, nature, life.

I am all for technology – but a better technology, a more human technology.

YOU ARE FAMOUS FOR YOUR CONTRADICTIONS. BUT IT SEEMS THAT ONE OF THE MOST
POWERFUL CONFIRMATIONS THAT YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE -- FOR THE WORLD IN GENERAL AND
POSTERITY -- IS THAT, IN ALL THOSE MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF WORDS, SPOKEN
SPONTANEOUSLY OVER SEVERAL DECADES, YOU REALLY NEVER EVER CONTRADICTED
YOURSELF AT ALL.

That's true!

I have never contradicted myself. I cannot do it. In the first place I don't remember anything that I have said
before -- how to contradict it?

Secondly, it is not my thinking, it is my experience. Contradictions happen in thinking, but not in
experience. I have said things which may appear to people contradictory, but they are really evolutionary.
My experience I have expressed in different ways; that may create the idea that I am contradictory. I was
expressing it in different ways so if you have missed one way, perhaps the other way you may get it.
I have tried to describe it from all aspects possible, just to help people, because sometimes it happens
that one aspect does not reach you but the other aspect is more in tune with you. I have used all possible,
multi-dimensional expressions, but there is no way for me to contradict. It is my experience. I am not taking
about others' experience. Even if I am talking about others, it is always according to my experience. They
may agree with it, they may not agree with it -- but I cannot go against my experience.

During the years, talking to you, I have been sharpening my arrows, my words, so that they can
penetrate directly to your heart. But contradiction is not there at all. And you are right: the day all of my
words will be understood, there will be found an undercurrent running through all of them and joining them.

They are like flowers of a garland -- a thin thread, invisible, is running through all the flowers -- and that is
my consistency, that is my experience.

It is true, I don't think anybody else has spoken so much. Much of it is lost because it was not recorded;
almost half of it is lost, but whatever remains is still more than anyone else has ever tried to convey.

The reason is simple: I enjoy it, I love it. When I see a word settling in your heart, my joy knows no
bounds. When I see a glimpse in your eyes that you have caught the meaning, I am immensely happy.
And I had to speak so much because nobody before me has addressed the whole world. They were
addressing small fragments of humanity. Jesus remained confined to Judea, Buddha remained confined to
Bihar, Socrates remained confined to Athens. Fortunately they don't let me remain in one place, so I have to
be all over the world. And I have to speak again and again through different angles about the same
experience, because in that also my life has been unique: people have been coming to me and leaving me --
new people coming, old people going. It has been beautiful. It has not been like a dead pond where the
water only evaporates, and soon there is left nothing but muddy mess.

It is almost as if I have been speaking by the side of a river, which is running so fast that each time I
look at it there are new faces to whom I have to speak again. In thirty years so many people have changed. It
was not true about Socrates or Buddha or Lao Tzu, they worked with a group their whole life. I have been
working with so many new people, and I have always to find out a new mode, a new phase, new
expressions, new bottles for the old wine... but the wine is old, and it is the same wine that I have been
offering to all.

AS SOCIETY'S HOLD ON PEOPLE'S MINDS BEGINS TO DISINTEGRATE, IN TIMES OF SOCIAL CRISIS
SUCH AS NOW THERE SEEMS TO BE A TENDENCY FOR AN INCREASING NUMBER OF PEOPLE TO
FALL BELOW THE MIND INTO MADNESS. ALSO, IS IT TRUE THAT THIS IS PARALLELED BY A
TENDENCY FOR PEOPLE TO LOOK AT THE POSSIBILITY OF GOING BEYOND THE MIND INTO
ENLIGHTENMENT?

Times of crisis are both dangerous and immensely important -- dangerous for those who have no
courage to explore new dimensions of life. They are bound to disintegrate into different kinds of madness,
because their mind was made by the society. Now the society is disintegrating, the mind cannot remain; its
roots are in the society. It is constantly nourished by the society -- now that nourishment is disappearing.

Because the society is disintegrating, a great suspicion, a doubt that was never there before, is bound to
arise in the individuals. And if they were just obedient people who have never gone beyond any limit that
society has decided, who have always been respected, honorable citizens -- in other words, just mediocre --
they will immediately go mad.

They will start committing suicide, they will start jumping from high buildings... or even if they live,
now they don't have a mind which can help them to figure out the situation for their life. They will become
retarded, stupid, idiotic, may become schizophrenic, split into two persons -- or perhaps a crowd.

In times of crisis, the danger is for those who have enjoyed the times when the society was settled, when
there was no problem, everything was at ease, they were honored, respected. These were the people who
had enjoyed the obedience of the mind, and these are going to be the sufferers. It is a simple arithmetic.
They will go psychotic, they will go neurotic -- and these words don't make much difference.
I have heard a definition. One psychoanalyst was asked, "What is the difference between psychosis and
neurosis?"

And the psychoanalyst said, "The psychotic person believes that two and two are five. And the neurotic
person knows that two and two are four, but is not at ease with the fact that two and two are four." So the
difference is very fine. Both are in trouble.

But times of crisis are of tremendous significance for those daring souls who have never bothered about
society's respectability, its honors; who have never bothered about what others think about them, but have
done only that which they felt right to do; who have in a certain way been always rebellious, individualistic.
For these people the times of crisis are just golden, because the society is disintegrating. Now it cannot
condemn anybody -- it is itself condemned, cursed. It cannot say to others that they are wrong. It is itself
proving wrong; its whole wisdom is proving just foolish, superstitious.

The daring individual can use this opportunity to go beyond mind, because now the society cannot
prevent him, cannot hinder him. Now he is free.
It is almost like a situation in a jail... when the doors are open, the guards have disappeared and the jailer
is nowhere to be found. The people who have some sense, some intelligence, will use it for freedom. But
those who have become so enslaved that they cannot think of freedom -- imprisonment has become their
home -- they will simply panic, "What is going to happen today? No guards? No jailer? The doors are open!

Who will take care of us? Who will provide food for us?"

There will be people whose slavery has penetrated to their very soul; these people will go berserk. But
the people who always were in search of a moment when they can escape from the prison will be immensely
happy. This was the time they have been waiting and praying for. They will escape out of the prison into the
open sky. Going beyond the mind is going into the open sky, full of stars, the moon, the sun -- the
immensity of it... It becomes yours; the whole existence becomes yours.

The mind is a small cage.

So moments of crisis are both... and that is what is happening all around the world. There has never been
so intense a search for spiritual growth, for meditation. But there has never been so much madness either.

Both are happening because the status quo is no longer powerful; it has lost control.

When Galileo found that the earth moves around the sun, not vice versa as THE BIBLE says, the pope
asked him to be present in his court. Many things happened that day. One was very important. Galileo
asked, "What does it matter if one statement in THE BIBLE is proved wrong? It does not prove the whole
BIBLE wrong. I am a devout Christian, a practicing Christian, and I don't see the point that if one statement
is wrong it makes a difference."

But the pope said, "You don't understand" -- and the pope was right. He said, "When one statement is
proved wrong then thousands of problems will arise. One -- that God can be wrong. And if he is wrong
about one statement, what is the certainty about other statements?" Just one brick taken out of the palace,
and the whole palace may collapse.

"I cannot allow," the pope said, "any statement in THE BIBLE to be wrong."

His argument is significant. Today not only one thing about the old mind, the old society, is wrong, but
so many things are wrong that it needs an absolute idiot to still believe in it. Just a little intelligence and it is
impossible to be part of the old mind. It has lost credibility -- and not in one place, but all over the world.
There are different kinds of old traditions, but they all have come to a point where so many things are
scientifically proved wrong.

You will be surprised to know... One Jaina monk had come to see me; he had collected millions of
rupees to make a lab to prove that man has not reached the moon. He wanted my support, that I should be
the director of his lab. He would give any finance that was needed, but it had to be proved that no man has
stepped on the moon.

I said, "Why are you so much worried about it?"

He said, "You don't understand. In Jainism, the moon is a god, not a planet. You cannot walk on a god.

And they have not only walked on a god, they have brought stones and other things from the moon to be
studied on the earth. It has to be proved that they are deceiving the whole world, that all these things they
had taken from the earth, and they have brought them back... Nobody has been to the moon; nobody can
have been, otherwise the whole system of Jainism will collapse." I said, "Just for a single thing, that the
moon proves to be a planet not a god...?"

He said, "If one thing is wrong, then everything becomes suspicious. We cannot afford anything to be
wrong."

I said, "You are too late! Many things have already been proved wrong. You are not very
knowledgeable. You have been simply reading the newspapers, and because it is a recent event, man
landing on the moon... otherwise in three hundred years science has destroyed much that all the religions
have believed in for centuries."

That man was really in tremendous anguish. And I said, "For you, being a monk, it does not matter
whether anything is wrong or right -- your search is for the truth, for peace and silence. And you are getting
so much upset. Your very anguish shows that your own mind is shattered. It is not a question of Jaina
scriptures, or the Jaina tradition, it is a question of your mind.

"You are collecting all this money, not for Jaina scriptures but to save your sanity; otherwise you would
go insane. You have sacrificed your whole life, and now you find that the gods you have been worshipping
are not gods but just planets, as ordinary as the earth, and very poor -- no water, no plants, no life. It is your
mind that is going to be shattered. How will you account for your whole life...?"

This is the situation of many people of intelligence. Either they are going insane... you can see it --
psychotherapy and other schools of therapies are growing fast. They are the most highly paid people, people
are going through psychoanalysis for years at a time. In fact people have started boasting... In women's
clubs you can go and hear it, that one woman will be saying, "How many years have you been in
psychoanalysis? -- just seven years? I have been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years." It has become
something of pride. But to be in psychoanalysis simply means you are insane; otherwise why are you taking
the treatment? And it is spreading.

But the most intelligent people are rushing towards the East to find some way, some method, some
meditation -- Yoga, Zen, Sufism, Hassidism. Somewhere somebody must know how to get over this critical
stage, how to go beyond the traditional mind and still remain centered, sane, and intelligent. Thousands of
people are moving towards the East.

It is very hilarious because thousands of people are coming from the East to the West to study science,
medicine, engineering, electronics, and the people who know all these are going to the East, just to learn
how to sit silently and do nothing.

But it is a beautiful time. The grip of society is lost. Yes, the mediocre will suffer, but anyway they were
not enjoying, they were not really living; they were simply being hypocrites. By being insane at least they
will be real, authentic. They won't lose anything -- of course they won't gain much....

But the people who will go beyond mind will create the new man, the new mind. And the most special
thing to be remembered about the new mind is that it will never become a tradition, that it will be constantly
renewed. If it becomes a tradition it will be the same thing.

The new mind has to become continuously new, every day new, ready to accept any unexpected
experience, any unexpected truth... just available, vulnerable. It will be a tremendous excitement, a great
ecstasy, a great challenge.

So I don't think this crisis is bad; it is good. A few people will lose their masks, and will be actually
what they are -- neurotic, psychotic -- but at least they will be true and they will be honest. You may think
they are mad; they are not mad, they are simply in a state of very great surprise. They have believed too
much in the old mind, and it betrayed them.

But the best of the intelligence will reach to heights unknown before. And if even in a traditional world,
a man like Gautam Buddha or Chuang Tzu or Pythagoras is possible, we can conceive that in the
atmosphere that the new mind will create, a thousandfold more awakened people, enlightened people will
become easily possible.
If the new mind can prevail then life can become an enlightening process. And enlightenment will not
be something rare, that it happens once in a while to somebody very special; it will become a very ordinary
human experience, that only once in a while some really idiotic person misses.

EVERYTHING IS PERFECT, BUT ALSO, THE THIRD WORLD WAS IS COMING. YOU SAY: DO
NOT TRY TO CHANGE THE WORLD – BUT JUST OUTSIDE THE ASHRAM GATE, A BEGGAR’S
CHILD LOOKS LIKE HE IS NEARLY STARVING. WHAT TO DO?

‘Everything is perfect but also the Third World War is coming’ – that is going to be perfect too. It will
kill utterly. It will be a total war – the perfect, the most perfect ever. Now, the problem arises: the
world war is coming, and what are you doing here? Meditating? You should go into the world and
prevent the world war. Can you do that? Is it possible to prevent it? Is it possible to do anything
about it? You will be wasting your life. You have a very short life. These few moments are very
valuable – and they were never so valuable before, because the Third World War is coming. Before,
there was always time. Now it seems, any moment, time will be finished. It can happen tomorrow
morning. Anybody can go beserk.

Richard Nixon, when he was in a turmoil after Watergate, had ideas in his mind to create a Third
World War. he had the key to trigger the phenomenon, and of course he was in great anxiety and
anguish. And I must say this one thing in favor of this man: that he resisted the temptation. It would
have been very easy to trigger the war, and he would have become the last President of America...
dearly lost... and he would have had the whole of history. He would have been the most historical
person of all. Of course, there would have been nobody to write the history; that is another thing.
And it would have been better, at least for him, not to be in such disgrace.

He could have saved his
own ego. This much must be said about the man: that he resisted the temptation, which was not
very easy. He could have simply started dropping atom-bombs on Moscow. Within fifteen minutes,
just within fifteen minutes every single soul on the earth would have been dead.

We have the capacity to kill the whole earth seven times. We have the capacity to super-kill. Each
person on this earth can be killed seven times; that many atom and hydrogen-bombs are ready, piled
up, waiting. Any day, any politician can go beserk – and politicians are mad people. They are not
very sane; otherwise why should they be in politics in the first place? You are sitting on a volcano.

Never before has it been so dangerous. And you think: ‘What am I doing here? Meditating?’ What
else to do?

While the time is still there, meditate. If the volcano erupts and you die meditating, you will know
the taste of the deathless. And if many people in the world decide to meditate, the Third World War
may never happen. Because this has been observed again and again, down through the centuries;
that if in a village of a hundred people only one person starts meditating, the whole quality of the
consciousness of the village changes – one percent only – because the one person comes in contact
with the hundred persons of the village, a small village. He is related to everybody: somebody is
an uncle and somebody is something else; somebody is a brother somebody is related through the
wife. he is related, interconnected. he starts vibrating a different energy, the meditative energy.

The whole quality of the village consciousness changes with a single person’s meditation. If only
one percent of humanity started meditating, there is a possibility that the Third World War can be
avoided. There is no other possibility.

Why, in the first place, are people so violent that they have to fight again and again? In three
thousand years’ time there have been fifteen thousand wars, five wars to each year. The whole of
humanity seems to be insane: we have just been fighting and doing nothing.

Now, out of these three
thousand year’s violence, there is coming a crescendo – the final way, the total way. You would like
to go into the world and convince the politicians, or arrange a protest march towards Washington
and Moscow. That is not going to help. Because have you watched? – the people who join in the
protest marches are very violent people. Have you not watched it? Their shouting, their slogans;
they are all violent, aggressive people. Maybe they are for peace, but they are ready to fight for it.

And fight is the problem. What will you do? You will start shouting, you will create slogans, and you
will get heated-up by it; you will start fighting.

That’s what politicians have always been doing. Moscow is not for war, neither is Washington. The
communist says: We have to arrange for war because we want peace in the world; and the capitalist
says the same. The capitalist and the communist and the fascist are not different; they all prepare
for war, and they all say they are preparing for peace. Now you go on a protest march, and you are
a violent person.

The only protest march can be: meditate, sit silently, and create a meditative energy.

Once in this ashram there was a competition, an essay competition to describe the meditative
person. And of course, as can be expected, Mulla Nasrudin came first. His description is REALLY
beautiful. Mulla Nasrudin explained the difference between a person who is meditative and one who
is not, in this way: ‘A non-meditative person is one who if he jumps of a skyscraper, goes whoosh,
splat! – finished. A meditative person is still clicking his fingers halfway down saying, ‘So far, so
good.’

If it is going to happen, it is going to happen; you click your fingers and say,

‘So far, so good.’ You
are still alive. The Third World Was has not yet happened; don’t miss this chance to dance. And by
your dancing, I am saying you will create a ripple. Meditate: by your meditation, you will release a
different quality of energy into the world.

If you can convert one percent of the whole world into mad orange people, dancing, singing,
meditating, not at all political.... Those protest marchers ARE political; politics is the root cause.

We need non-political persons. I have not ever voted in my life, and people would come to me and
they would say, ‘But you can vote for the person you would like.’ I said, ‘For whomsoever I vote, it
goes to a politician. I cannot vote. I am a non-participant. They are all the same; their names differ.’

Now this pacifist is also a political person. I would like you to create a few people who are nonpolitical.

‘Non-political’ is what I mean by religious – a person who says, ‘Okay, if it is going to
happen, it is going to happen. Why should I waste my time? I should meditate, I should enjoy
should delight. Meanwhile, I am going to dance. If it is going to happen, it will happen, but why
should I miss the dance? The time is short.’ If you start dancing, if you start loving, if you become
friendly, if you enjoy life, you will create energy which will be for peace – without thinking of peace at
all. So I don’t talk about peace, I talk about love. Peace follows love-energy like a shadow.

I know there is poverty, there are beggars, but what to do? Whatsoever you do is not going to
help. Down through the centuries, people have been serving people, donating, giving money,
clothes, food; much philanthropy has been there, but nothing has happened.

Then there have
been communist countries where they saw that religion had failed. In fact, religion has never been
tried, but it looks as if religion had failed because these people are thought to be ‘religious people’:
those who donate, give charity, and do things like that. These are not religious people, these are
guilty people. They feel guilt. When a person accumulates too much money he starts feeling guilty.
Now he has to do something to unburden his guilt, so he gives to charities.

This is just to console
his own conscience.
It happened:

Andrew Carnegie had donated to many libraries, to many colleges, to many universities, medical
colleges, and a thousand and one institutions. When he was dying – he was one of those robberbarons
– he enquired of his secretary, ‘How much have I donated in my whole life?
’
He had donated
millions of dollars. The secretary rushed to the treasurer and enquired; it was a big list. He listened:
the total was millions and millions of dollars. He was surprised. he opened his eyes, he suddenly
became very much alive, and he said, ‘But from where, I wonder, could I get that much money?

From where? Have I donated that much? But from where could I get that much money?’ You have
got it from the same people to whom you donate. From one pocket you take, with another hand you
give, and of course, you never give the whole, total amount. You just give a part of it. It is a trick.
And this has not helped.

If you need a world without poverty, greed has to disappear. No, charity is not going to help; it has
not helped. Greed has to disappear, hoarding has to disappear. That’s what I am trying to teach
you: if you love life, you never become a hoarder. Life is so beautiful; who bothers about tomorrow?

That’s why I go on repeating again and again: live in the moment, then there will be no beggars.
But you live in the future – then there are going to be beggars. You accumulate for the future; then
certainly, it cannot be available to all who are alive right now.

The earth is enough for the people who are alive. If nobody gathers for the future, hoards for the
future, thinks of the future, everybody will be happy, and everybody will have enough. But you
think about the future. You are not happy right now: you think, ‘Tomorrow I will be happy.’ So you
sacrifice your present, and you sacrifice somebody else’s present too, to heard for the future. The
beggar on the street is not the problem, the beggar on the street is simply a symptom; your greed
is the problem. You can give something to the beggar; I am not saying don’t give. It will give you a
consolation that you have done something – you give to the beggar. And the beggar is in the same
boat: he is also hoarding. He may not be so beggarly as he looks, because I know about beggars
who have bank balances. it may just be his profession, so he has to be beggarly. He has to show
that he is dying, because you have become so hard: unless somebody is dying, you will not melt.

He has to sit there, shivering in the cold. He can afford a blanket, he has enough money; but he
cannot afford it – because if he has the blanket you will not feel sorry, you will not feel guilty. His
shivering gives you a shivering. He has to pretend.

I used to know one student. he was my student in the university. I enquired of him, ‘Where do you
live?’ He said, ‘Don’t ask, sir.’ I insisted, so he said, ‘I have never told it to anyone because my
father has told me not to say it to anyone. But I can say it to you. Please don’t say it to anybody.’ I
said, ‘what is the matter?’ He said, ‘My father is a beggar. You must have seen him; he begs at the
railway station.’ I said, ‘He is your father?’ ‘He’s my father. And he has enough money. But I cannot
say it to anybody, otherwise his prestige as a beggar will be at stake.’ And this boy used to always
live like a rich man. And that beggar I knew, because I was continuously travelling, or every day I
was coming and going from the station. And I was one of the persons whom he was cheating; he
would always take something from me. Coming or going, I had to give something to him. He would
not leave me. I said, ‘Okay, next time I will see’.

So next time I went, he came running: ‘I am dying, and my wife is very ill and in the hospital.’ I said,
‘And what about your son?’ He said, ‘What son?’ I said, ‘He is my student.’ He said, ‘Sir, please
don’t say it to anybody, and I will never bug you any more!’

If you want to help, you help. But remember, that is not my cup of tea. It is your trip, and please, don’t
try to lay your trips on me. If you want to help beggars, help them. You help to the very extreme.

When you become a beggar then others will help you. This is how things have been going on –
because charity has not helped; communism came in, and communism has not helped either. It has
not made anybody rich. It has simply made the rich poor. The poor remain poor; only the rich have
disappeared. But now there is no comparison.

That’s why Russians don’t allow their citizens to go and see America. That is dangerous, because
the American poor are far richer than the Russian rich. It is dangerous. In Russia, the rich man
has disappeared; all are poor. Equality has been established because all are poor. Nobody is rich,
true, but the poverty has not changed, and the greed has not changed. Now the state has become
greedy. Now the state plans for the future: seventy percent of their budget goes to war preparation.

The country remains hungry: people don’t have shoes, people don’t have clothes – but seventy
percent of the budget goes to war preparations for the future, for some third world war. This is
communism.

Communism has failed, failed more than the old ways of charity – because it has created a new
class. The rich man is not there, but he bureaucrat. The bourgeoisie has disappeared, but the
bureaucracy has come in. Now the rich man is not there, but the Communist Party member; now
he is the elite. And the same oppression continues in a far stronger way. Never before on the earth
has there been such slavery as exists in Russia and China.

‘So what to do?’ you ask. My suggestion is: don’t think that you can prevent the third world war, don’t
think you can change poverty. You can change only yourself. Drop your greed, drop your future,
drop your mind, become more loving, become more heartful, and live from the heart. And if many
people start living that way, that is the only way to change the world. The world cannot be changed
directly because there is no soul to the world. The soul exists in the individual; only individuals can
be changed.

If you remain a hoarder – greedy, violent, repressed – this society will continue. And you can give
money to the beggar and he will remain a beggar, because money never changes anything. I have
seen millionaires, and still beggars; so miserly that whatsoever they have makes no difference.

I have heard....

Two Jewish refugees passed the home of John D. Rockefeller. ‘If I only had that man’s millions,’
sighed one of them, ‘I would be richer than he is.’
‘That does not make sense,’ the other reminded him. ‘If you had Mr. Rockefeller’s millions, you
would be just as rich as he, not richer.’

‘You are wrong,’ the first assured him. ‘Don’t forget that I could give Hebrew lessons on the side.’
Now a beggar remains a beggar: he will give Hebrew lessons on the side, even if he has all the
money of a John D. Rockefeller.

People don’t change. Money never changes anything. If YOU change, that is an altogether different
thing. I am not saying don’t have compassion; I am saying have compassion, but don’t think that
by your compassion the world is going to change. Don’t hope for that. Give whatsoever you can
give, share whatsoever you can share, but share only out of love. Don’t think in terms of politics, of
changing the world; otherwise you will be frustrated. Forget all about it. You do whatsoever you feel
like doing. If you meet a beggar, and you have a feeling arising in you, do something, whatsoever
you feel like doing. I am not saying don’t do anything. I am simply saying don’t hope that you are
changing the world. Nothing is being changed.

The only way to change the world is to change the level of consciousness – and that you can do
only in yourself. It cannot be done to anybody else from the outside. Yes, if YOU change your
level of consciousness, you create vibes which change people, which change people without their
knowledge.

A different milieu is needed in the world – not a different society but a different milieu. A different
spiritual vibe is needed. That’s why I am not interested directly: I don’t want to make you social
servants, missionaries, and things like that. I want you to be absolutely selfish.

First try to know who you are: this is the first principle of selfishness. First try to love: this is the
second principle of selfishness. Love yourself so that you can love others.

And the third principle
of selfishness: live the moment delightfully, celebrating – and then something will start happening
through you. You will become a triggering-point; a world process starts.
Whenever a Buddha happens, a world process starts. You become a Buddha, awakened. That’s all
you can do.

TODAY I SAW AND HEARD YOU IN THE FLESH AND I FOUND MYSELF IN
ACCORD WITH AND MOVED AND INSPIRED BY YOU SO MUCH THAT I FEEL
I MUST ASK YOU TWO QUESTIONS CONNECTED WITH IT AND ANOTHER
NOT DIRECTLY CONNECTED.

WHY ARE YOU SO MUCH AGAINST THE MIND? SURELY WE ALL USE IT AND
NEED IT, AND IT SEEMS TO ME THAT IT IS ONLY WHEN WE ABUSE IT --
THAT IS TO SAY, USING IT AS A DEFENSE AGAINST FEELING TOO DEEPLY
AND AGAINST TRANSCENDING ITSELF -- THAT WE ARE ENTITLED TO
CRITICIZE.

THE OTHER QUESTION IS CONCERNED MORE WITH MY PROBLEM,
ALTHOUGH NO DOUBT THERE ARE OTHERS WHO FEEL AS I DO:

WHY DO YOU FIND IT SO NECESSARY, SO IMPORTANT, FOR SANNYASINS
TO WEAR ORANGE AND A PHOTOGRAPH OF YOURSELF -- IN FACT A SORT
OF UNIFORM AND AN ICON? IF I LEAVE HERE WITH A FEELING OF LOVE
AND DEEP RESPECT FOR A WISE MAN, A HEALER, I SHALL NOT NEED TO
CARRY HIS PHOTO AROUND WITH ME. HIS IMAGE WILL BE TOO DEEPLY
ENTRENCHED IN MY INNER SELF, AND IF I NEED TO CONSULT HIM IN MY
MIND, I SHALL "CONJURE HIM UP" AND SEE HIM MUCH MORE VIVIDLY
THAN IF I LOOK AT A PHOTO. I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO TAKE
SANNYAS, BUT BECAUSE OF THIS LAST QUESTION YOU MAY NOT ACCEPT
ME.

Joyce Brandt, dear lady, please excuse me. It must have been just coincidence that you
felt in accord with me; it can only be a coincidence, otherwise it is impossible to feel in
accord with me.

And don't decide so soon. You have heard me only once: just be here a little longer, and
you will see so many contradictions! Wait a little, give me a little more time, and you will
not feel in accord with me at all. In fact this time too, it was not you feeling in accord
with me, but me somehow appearing in accord with you.

You already have great ideas, you are very knowledgeable. Your question is not out of
innocence, it is out of knowledge.

So many people are here: I cannot say things which will shatter everybody's mind. If I
say something and it shatters one person's mind, it may be in accord with somebody else's
mind. For him I will work tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. But sooner or later the
hammer comes down on everybody -- and then you will not feel so inspired.

In fact,
answering your question, I will make you very much uninspired. Wait!

What do you mean by "inspiration"? It seems you already know something; otherwise,
what do you mean by "inspiration"? What do you mean by "accord"? You already know
something, and you say "Yes, this man is talking sense" -- sense, because this is what you
have always believed in.

I am not here to support your belief: I have to take your beliefs away. I am not here to
inspire you, because all inspiration creates slavery. If you are inspired by me, you will
become a slave to me, you will become dependent on me. I don't inspire you, I simply go
on shattering, shocking you. Sooner or later, I am here, you are here, and we are
tremendously connected, but there is no slavery, no dependence. We relate, but there is
no question of inspiration, because one who inspires you automatically becomes
important for you -- so much so that you start feeling dependent.

You are searching for a father-figure who can inspire you, who can put a little fire in your
dull and dead life. But if somebody else puts fire into your life, he becomes powerful
over you.

I am not here to put any fire into you, I am just here to help you to see your own fire. Be
a light unto yourself. Inspiration means you will follow somebody else, you will imitate
them; you will become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. Sannyas is a
declaration that you are no longer a Hindu, no longer a Christian, no longer a
Mohammedan, that you don't belong to any creed or any dogma. I have no creed, no
dogma. Becoming a sannyasin simply means that you have declared your freedom.

But certainly the question arises: Why the orange, the mala and the photograph? Why?

This is a device, dear lady, to keep unwanted people out. This is not for the crowds, it is
not for the mob, it is only for the chosen few. The ultimate -- call it God, enlightenment --
is only for those who are really courageous, immensely courageous, because the ultimate
becomes available only to those who can drop the mind and move into the immediate.

The immediate is the door to the ultimate. And to drop the mind needs great courage -- it
is not for everybody.

This is just a device. Orange is as good as any other color, or no color. It has nothing
special about it. I could have chosen any -- green, black, that would have done. But its
purpose is that it is a device. It is for people who are ready to do a few mad things --
because later on, bigger and bigger mad things are waiting. If you cannot do such a
simple, silly thing as wearing orange, a locket and a mala, if you can't gather enough
courage to look foolish, a laughing-stock wherever you go, and feel absurd and ridiculous
-- if you cannot do this much, then this place is not for you, because bigger and bigger
things will have to be done.

As you move deeper into intimacy with me, I will demand more and more illogical
things, because only through those demands can the mind disappear; there is no other
way. Those demands are like electric shocks. Only then can your cultivated mind,
cultivated for centuries, be shaken to the foundations.

This is just a simple device to help freak out people who are not meant to be here. They
simply escape. Seeing such a mad crowd, seeing people in orange, they become afraid
and they escape.

This is deliberately done. I could have made it easier for you to be here, to gather more
knowledge and be inspired, and things like that. But this is not Christian Science. I am
not Billy Graham, I am not here to inspire you. This is a totally different phenomenon. In
fact I am not even religious; I am not spiritual at all. All these labels are utterly irrelevant.

This is just a device to choose those who are ready to go with me, who are ready to go
with me to absurd limits.
But you are more clever. You say, "I can have you in my heart, entrenched deep in my
being" -- as if you know what being is and what depth is. You are cunning and clever.

You say, "I can conjure you up." But whatsoever you conjure up will be your own mind,
a figment of your own mind; it will not be me, it cannot be me.
You can have me only if you move with me unconditionally. No condition from your side
can be accepted. And sometimes I demand things which are patently absurd, and I know
that they are absurd.

My people slowly slowly start understanding that if you can do something absurd, that
helps you become a little loose, out from your mind. Once you are unconditionally with
me, then if I say, "Go and move naked in the streets," you say, "Okay".... If you can say
that, simply and innocently, I am not going to send you to move naked in the streets; the
purpose is fulfilled. If you hesitate, if you say, "What do you mean?" then you will have
to go.

These are small devices. And sometimes small devices work very deeply, because you
cannot detect them. Big devices you can detect -- they are so big, any stupid person can
see them.

Just the other day, Krishna Prem wrote a letter to me saying that he remembers that in
many many past lives he has been related to Divyananda, with whom he is in love. In the
past life, he was the mother and Divyananda was the son. And he could not fulfill all the
motherly duties in that life, so that's why he is in love with Divyananda now.

"But now it
seems that the debts are paid, and Divyananda is hurting me in many ways, so should I
finish the relationship?"

I sent him a message: "Go and talk to Teertha." He was very much hurt, naturally. He
was talking about such big things: he must have been waiting for me to say, "Krishna
Prem, you have arrived. Remembering your past lives, this is great! This is your first
satori, Krishna Prem." Deep down, he must have waited for this.

Rather than saying anything about his great experience, I told him to go to Teertha and
talk. That must have hurt him deeply because I am not directly answering him, I am
sending him to Teertha. And who is this Teertha, anyhow? Krishna Prem being sent to
Teertha? Krishna Prem is as highly evolved as Teertha, so why? Or maybe he is even
higher and holier. Why? Why to Teertha?

For two days he lived in great despair. Now, such a small thing, and he could not detect
it. It took forty-eight hours for him to detect it, then he understood: "This is just a shock
to my ego." And then immediately, in that understanding, all despair disappeared. In that
understanding, just that moment, all darkness was gone and he was light, happy, and back
to his natural being again. But it took him forty-eight hours to detect it.

Now there is no need: Krishna Prem, you need not go to Teertha. Now I will find
something else!

Small, very small things are more difficult to detect, for the simple reason that they are
small. Big things you can see. When there are mountains you can see them, but just a
small grain of sand is undetectable.

Joyce Brandt, if you want to be here, if you really want to relate with me, you will have
to learn a totally different way of relating. I am not a teacher, so if you are only a student
here to be inspired, and all that.... I am not a missionary, either; I am not here to convert
you to some philosophy.

If you are really to relate with a master -- who has no knowledge but who knows, who
has knowing but no knowledge -- then you will have to relax a little. You will have to
drop your ideas of how things should be. Remember always, many times it happens: you
want to become a sannyasin, but you forget who is the master and who is the disciple,
and deep down you start expecting things to be fulfilled by the master. He has to be
according to you, then he is right.

But any master worth the name can never be according to you. People who are according
to you are politicians. They know that you will follow them only if they are according to
you: that is a mutual arrangement. They have to follow you to make followers out of you:
that is a mutual exploitation. That's what political leaders are, followers of the followers.

They go on looking at you, at what your expectations are, and they go on fulfilling them.

I offend in every way. I cannot fulfill your expectations. If I start fulfilling your
expectations, I will not be of any use to you. Then really you will be the master and I will
be the disciple.

Who is taking sannyas from whom? This has to be decided in the beginning. Am I taking
sannyas from you, or are you taking sannyas from me? Let it be very clear.

Many times
you take sannyas and it is not clear, and you want me to be this way or that way, to live
this way or to live that way. And if I am not according to you, then you are disappointed.

The real master will always disappoint you. He has to disappoint you. This is how, slowly
slowly, chunks of your mind will be broken off and taken away from you. I have to
continuously hammer you, and I have to be absolutely clear about it from the very
beginning. The orange, the mala, the picture, have no other purpose. The purpose is that
you have to know clearly that it is you who have to be unconditionally in accord with me,
and that you have to drop all expectations of my being in accord with you.

Only then can
the work start. Those who are ready for it, sannyas is only for them. Those who are not
ready for it, sannyas helps them to run away, to get lost.
You say: "Why are you so against the mind?"

I am not against the mind, I am simply stating the fact -- what the mind is.

If you see
what the mind is, you will drop it. When I say, "Drop the mind," I am not against the
mind. I am simply making it clear to you what the mind is, what it has done to you, how
it has become a bondage.

And it is not a question of using it or abusing it. Mind itself is the problem, not its use or
abuse. And remember, you cannot use the mind till you know how to be without the
mind. Only people who know how to be without the mind are capable of using the mind;
otherwise the mind uses them. It is the mind that is using you. But mind is very clever, it
goes on deceiving you. It goes on saying, "You are using me."

It is mind that is using you. You are being used; the mind has become the master of you,
you are a slave. But the mind is very clever, it goes on buttressing you. It says, "I am just
an instrument, you are the master." But watch, look into the mechanism of the mind, how
it goes on using you. You think you are using it. You can use it only when you know that
you are separate from it; otherwise how will you use it? You are identified with it.

If you say "I am a Christian," you are identified with the Christian mind. If you say "I am
a Hindu," you are identified with the Hindu mind. If you say "I am German," you are
identified with the German mind. This identification has to be broken. You have to know
that you are not the mind. And only in moments when the mind is not functioning --
when you are unoccupied, when there is a gap, stillness, silence, when the mind has
ceased -- will you be able to know who you are, to know yourself as consciousness. Then
you can use the mind.

I am using the mind, Brandt, you are not using the mind. So how can I be against the
mind? I am not against the mind. I may appear to be, but the whole effort is to disconnect
you from the mind so that you can know your separation from it, your freedom. Once you
know your freedom, you can use the mind. Then it is a beautiful instrument, one of the
most beautiful instruments. Man has not yet been able to make something better. Even
the biggest computer, the most efficient computer, is not yet capable of doing the things
that the mind can do. A single mind can contain all the libraries of the world.

It is tremendous to think of the powers of the mind. But because those powers are great,
there is danger also: they can overpower you. That's what has happened: because the
mind is such a beautiful, powerful instrument, you have become possessed by it. You
cannot use it any more. It uses you, it directs you, it gives you programs. It goes on
goading you in directions which it has decided to follow. It does not allow you any
freedom, it does not leave you any choice. Unless it is convinced, it won't allow you to
move even a single inch.

So who is the master? You cannot be the master unless you have come to know that you
are not identified with the mind.

The man who is identified with his car cannot drive it; the car will drive him, and then
some accident is bound to happen. You have to be separate from the car; you have to
know that you are separate, that the car is beautiful, a beautiful mechanism to be used,
and it can perform many things. But you have to be separate.

You say: "Why are you so against the mind? Surely we all use it...."

No. All cannot use it. Only very rarely is there a person who uses the mind: a Buddha, a
Jesus, an Atisha, a Tilopa -- only very rarely; and far and few between. Otherwise you are
used by the mind. No, all are not using the mind; otherwise what will the difference be
between a Buddha and you? There will be no difference. You use the mind and Buddha
uses the mind: what is the difference? Buddha uses the mind, you are used by the mind --
that's the difference. And Buddha can use the mind because he knows he is utterly
separate.

And remember, it is not a question of abuse. If you cannot use the mind, how can you
abuse it? It is the mind: whether it uses you or abuses you, you cannot abuse it.

When scientists discovered atomic energy, do you think they used the mind or abused it?

When the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Albert Einstein could not
sleep the whole night; for days his nights were disturbed. He could not sleep, he could not
rest, he was really terribly disturbed. He had been instrumental in creating the atom
bomb. It was he who wrote the letter to the president of America saying that the atom
bomb was possible.

Now the question arises: was Einstein consciously using his mind writing the letter to the
president of America releasing this powerful information to the politicians?

Was he
aware of the consequences? Did he ever think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- that
thousands of people, innocent civilians, would be burned within seconds, for no fault of
their own. No, he had not thought about it, he was not conscious about it.

In fact he was
not even alert to what use atom bombs would be put. And before he died somebody asked
him, "If you are born again, what would you like to be? A great mathematician again, a
great physicist, a great scientist?"

He is reported to have said, "No, never! Rather, I would like to be a plumber. But now it
is too late."

Einstein had one of the most beautiful minds. Did he abuse it? Do you think the scientists
who have created great technology and destroyed the whole ecology of the earth have
used their minds or abused them?

If one day this planet earth is going to die, it will be because of the great minds of the
twentieth century -- because if in the whole history of humanity there have been a
hundred scientists, ninety-nine happen to be alive in the twentieth century.

In fact
seventy-five percent of the great scientists of all the ages are alive now.
Mind has gathered such a great momentum. We have created great technology within the
last hundred years, particularly within these last ten years, but that technology is going to
destroy this earth. Who will be responsible? And what will you say? The scientists used
the mind or abused it?

If you ask me, I will say they were not masters of their minds. They neither used nor
abused the mind; the mind used them, abused them.

Science now needs great meditators, otherwise this earth is doomed. Science now needs
people who can use their minds, who are masters of their being, who can use science in a
conscious way. Otherwise we are on the verge of committing universal suicide.

Man cannot live for more than twenty-five years the way he has lived up to now, unless a
drastic change is made. And the greatest thing that can be of help, which can help
humanity to survive, and the earth to still go on living.... And this is a beautiful earth.

Compared to this earth millions and millions of stars are just dead: no flowers bloom, no
rivers flow, there are no birds, no animals, no people. This universe is almost a great
desert. This earth is alive! Something tremendously important -- consciousness -- has
happened here. But this consciousness is still not a master, it is a slave. It has to be freed.

That's my work here, my basic fundamental work: to help you be free of the mind so that
you can use it. And if you are the master, you cannot abuse it; that is impossible. When
you are alert, conscious, meditative, abuse is not possible.
If Einstein had also been a buddha, there would have been atomic energy but no atom
bombs, and atomic energy would have become a blessing -- the greatest blessing ever.

The earth would have become a paradise. But Albert Einstein is not a buddha;
unfortunately he knows nothing of meditation -- a great mind, but the master is missing; a
great mechanism, a great airplane without the pilot.

I have heard that they made an airplane which could go to the farthest distances without
any pilot -- pilotless, automatic. There was great thrill and enthusiasm, and on the first
flight the automatic mechanism communicated to the people: "We are moving at suchand-
such a height, at such-and-such a temperature, and at such-and-such a speed. Please
be at ease, don't be worried. Nothing can go wrong, nothing can go wrong, nothing can
go wrong, nothing can go wrong..." and it went on! It has already gone wrong. Think of
those people, what must have happened to those people! Now, what to do?

Great science is there, a by-product of the mind, but it is in the hands of slaves. Buddhas
are needed to take possession of humanity -- and one or two buddhas won't do. Many
many buddhas are needed in every field, in every direction, in every dimension of life, so
that the mind can be used. Otherwise the mind was never as efficient as it is now, and that
is the danger. The mind was never as clever as it is now, never as powerful as it is now.

We have given atom bombs into the hands of children. If no accident happens, that will
be a miracle. There is every possibility that an accident is bound to happen.

Children are
playing with atom bombs.

Politicians are the most immature minds in the world. Only third-rate minds become
interested in politics; mediocre people and people who are suffering from an inferiority
complex, they become politicians. And in these people's hands are atom bombs, hydrogen
bombs, laser beams, and this and that.

You can cease at any moment! -- I may not be able to finish my discourse.
Any
moment... we are sitting on a pile of hydrogen bombs, and there are so many... it is
unbelievable how stupid man can be. We have so many hydrogen bombs that we can
destroy every single human being seven hundred times. Now, what stupidity!

For what?
A man simply dies a single time. If you want to be very cautious, twice will do -- but
what is the point of seven hundred times?

And they are continuously creating more and more. The whole earth is full of hydrogen
bombs; we can destroy seven hundred earths like this. And still, seventy percent of our
energy is being put into war efforts. This whole earth seems to be a madhouse.

And you say, Brandt: "Surely we all use it and need it and it seems to me that it is only
when we abuse it -- that is to say, using it as a defense against feeling too deeply and
against transcending itself -- that we are entitled to criticize it."

I am not criticizing it. In fact, you will be able to appreciate it more if you understand
what I am saying, you will be able to use it more if you understand what I am saying. If
you become a transcendence of the mind, a witness to the mind, and you know that you
are separate, and the mind no longer has any sway over you, you are no longer
hypnotized by it, then you will be able to really appreciate it. I appreciate it. And you will
also be able to use it, and you will never be able to abuse it. A conscious person cannot
abuse anything.

THE BOOK OF WISDOM, OSHO

heartbeatsalute

01-05-2012, 09:25 AM

http://www.osho.com/library/online-library-nobody-personality-king-0e27711a-3ba.aspx
On Alice on Wonderland

heartbeatsalute

01-05-2012, 09:34 AM

Osho Sufi Story - This world is only a caravanserai

Osho - Your real home is where you are going. This world is not your real home. It is only a so-called home. It is just a consolation to call it home.

I have told you the story of a Sufi mystic. One night in Baghdad, the king heard somebody walking on the roof of his palace. He shouted, "Who is there? And what are you doing there?"

The man was not a thief. Without any fear he said, "Don't shout, that may disturb other people's sleep. It is none of your business. I am looking for my camel. My camel is lost and it is time for you to go to sleep."

The king could not believe what kind of madman could be on the roof of a palace searching for his camel. He called the guards and they searched all over the place but could not find the man. And the next day when he was sitting in his court he heard the same voice again; he recognized it.

The king immediately said, "Bring that man in," because he was arguing with the guard in front of the gate that he wanted to stay in the caravanserai.

And the guard said, "You will be getting into problems unnecessarily. This is the palace of the king; this is not a caravanserai."

The man said, "I know it is a caravanserai and you are just a guard. Don't bother me. Just let me go in. I want to discuss the matter with the king himself. If I can convince him that this is a caravanserai then I will stay. If he can convince me it is not a caravanserai, then of course I will leave. But I won't listen to you; you are just a guard."

And just at that moment the message came from inside, "Don't stop that man. We are in search of him; bring him in."

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Stories/Sufi/Osho_Sufi_world.jpg

Osho Sufi Story

The Sufi mystic was called in and the king said, "You seem to be a very strange fellow. I recognize your voice. You were the man on the roof searching for your camel and now you are calling my place, my home, a caravanserai."

The man laughed and said, "You seem to be a man of some understanding. It is possible to talk with you. Yes, it was me who was looking for the camel on the roof of the palace. Don't think that I'm insane. If you can look for blissfulness sitting on a golden throne, if you can look for God while continuously conquering and butchering and burning living human beings, what is wrong in searching for a camel on the roof of the palace? You tell me!

"If I am inconsistent you are also not consistent. And what right have you got to call this place your home, because I have been here before and on the same golden throne I have seen another man sitting. He looked just like you -- a little older."

The king said, "He was my father. Now he's dead." And the mystic said, "I was here even before that and I found another man. He also looked a little bit like you but very old." The king said, "You are right, he was my grandfather." And the mystic said, "What happened to him?" The king said, "He is dead."

And the mystic said, "When are you going to die? They also believed that this is their home. I have argued with your grandfather. Now the poor fellow is in the grave. I have argued with your father; that poor fellow is also in the grave. Now I am arguing with you and someday I will come back again and I will be arguing with your son and you will be in a grave. So what kind of home is this where people go on changing? It is a caravanserai. It is just an overnight stay, and then one has to go."

The king was shocked but was silent. The whole court was silent. The man was right. And the mystic finally said, "If you really want to know where your home is, go to the graveyard where finally you will have to settle, where your grandfather is, where your father is. That is the real place that you can call your home, but not this palace. Here I am going to stay as if it is a caravanserai."

The king was certainly not an ordinary man. He stood up and told the mystic, "Forgive me, I was wrong. You are right. You can stay as long as you want. I am going in search of my real home. This is not my real home." This world is only a caravanserai.

Note - 'caravanserai' is a urdu word and it means a resting place or guest house on the way.

"For those who cannot afford America’s healthcare system, there is an alternative. That alternative is awakening. If you remove the veils that are destroying your energy, you will experience your body coming into harmony for the first time. As long as the veils are in place, they will constantly stress your body with negativity. The ego transforms the beautiful light of God into a mindless, dis-harmonious chaos, never ever allowing the physical body to operate harmoniously. Without harmony and balance the body is always in a state of dis-ease. If one’s ego patterning is such that there is a total rejection of the body, then the power of the God within is being used to attack it. Awakened, you will look back and wonder that your body was able to survive the constant assaults and poisonings of the ego experience."

theres some freakin truth!

heartbeatsalute

01-05-2012, 09:09 PM

"For those who cannot afford America’s healthcare system, there is an alternative. That alternative is awakening. If you remove the veils that are destroying your energy, you will experience your body coming into harmony for the first time. As long as the veils are in place, they will constantly stress your body with negativity. The ego transforms the beautiful light of God into a mindless, dis-harmonious chaos, never ever allowing the physical body to operate harmoniously. Without harmony and balance the body is always in a state of dis-ease. If one’s ego patterning is such that there is a total rejection of the body, then the power of the God within is being used to attack it. Awakened, you will look back and wonder that your body was able to survive the constant assaults and poisonings of the ego experience."

theres some freakin truth!

Yeah, there are a lot of things written there that are very realistic truths.
;):)

KNOWING WAKEFULNESS, DREAMING AND DEEP SLEEP-EACH SEPARATELY -- THE FOURTH STATE IS ATTAINED.
CONSTANCY OF KNOWLEDGE IS THE WAKING STATE.
CHOOSING IS THE DREAMING STATE.
UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS CREATE THE ILLUSION OF DEEP SLEEP.
HE WHO IS AWARE OF ALL THREE IS THE SUPREME HERO.
KNOWING WAKEFULNESS, DREAMING AND DEEP SLEEP -- EACH SEPARATELY -- -TURIYA, THE FOURTH STATE, IS ATTAINED.

Turiya, the fourth state, means supreme knowledge. The fourth state means that there is no darkness of any sort within. All the inner landscape is illuminated; no area of darkness remains. Nothing of ourselves, neither within nor without, is unknown to us. The light of wakefulness makes everything visible.

As we are now, we are either awake or dreaming or in deep sleep. We have no idea of the fourth state. When we are awake we see the outside world, but we ourselves are in darkness. Objects become visible, but we have no knowledge of our inner self. The world lights up but not the soul. This is the state of semi-wakefulness, half-wakefulness.

What we call waking up in the morning, is just this half-wakeful state. This is not really worthwhile because it is the useless which is visible; the useful remains hidden. We see the rubbish, but the diamonds remain in obscurity. We cannot see our own selves though the whole world is made visible to us.

The second state is the state of dreaming. In dreaming we lose not only ourselves, but also the outside world. All we see are images floating in the mind, reflections of the external world. We see these reflections as we would see the moon or the stars mirrored in a lake. On waking we see things distinctly; in dreams we see them as reflections.

The third state that we are acquainted with is deep sleep. In this state, first the external world, the world of objects is lost to us; then the reflections fade, dreams disappear and we are left in total darkness. This is known as deep sleep. In this state we have no knowledge either of the outer world or of the inner world.

In the waking state we have knowledge of the external world. In the dream state, which is between wakefulness and deep sleep, we have knowledge only of the reflections formed in the wakeful state, but no knowledge of the objects without.

The fourth state is turiya. This state is the goal we are striving to reach. All meditations, all yoga, are endeavors to reach the fourth state. The fourth state means knowledge of both, what is within and what is without - complete wakefulness; there is no darkness within or without. This is what is known as buddhahood. Mahavir called this enlightened state, jinatva. The light spreads everywhere, inside and out; and in this light we know objects and also know our self. These sutras show how the fourth state is attained.

The first sutra says:

KNOWING WAKEFULNESS, DREAMING AND DEEP SLEEP --

EACH SEPARATELY -- TURIYA, THE FOURTH STATE IS

ATTAINED.

We know, but we do not know that we know, each of these states. When we dream, we do not know we are dreaming; we are completely identified with the dream. It is only on awakening in the morning that we realize we were dreaming; but by the time we know it, the state has long since gone. While we are in this state we are not aware of it, apart from it, because we are identified with it. In the dream world we become the dream. By the time we realize it was a dream we have identified ourselves with the waking state.

You say: I am awake. You have forgotten that again, that very night, you will drop your identity with this state and become one with your dreams. You become one with whatever appears before your eyes - but the truth is that you are apart from all of them.

It is just as when the rains came, you feel that you are the monsoon; when summer comes you feel that you are summer, when winter comes that you are winter. The three seasons are all around you; you are totally separate from them. In childhood you thought you were a child; in youth you think you are young; when old age comes you will think you have become old. But you are beyond all three. If this were not so, how could the child become the youth? There is something within you that could leave childhood behind and continue into youth. That something is separate, apart, from childhood and youth.

You are lost when you dream. On waking you know the dream was false. There is some element of consciousness within you that is the voyager; waking, dreaming and deep sleep are just stoppages along the way. As soon as you become aware of the fact that you stand alone and apart from them, the fourth state is born within you. This separateness, this apartness, is the fourth state.

Mahavir has coined a beautiful word for this state. He calls it the science of discrimination. He says that the whole science consists of making careful discriminations of spiritual secrets. And this is also what the Shiv-Sutra aims at: you should realize that each of these states is separate. As soon as this realization is reached you will also know your separate identity. You will have learned the art of making distinctions. Right now your mental state is such that you identify with whatever appears before you.

Someone abuses you: you become angry. In that moment you are one with the anger. You completely forget that a moment ago there was no anger, but you existed; and in a moment the anger will pass away, but you will remain. So anger is the smoke that momentarily engulfs you; it is not your nature.

In anxiety, the cloud of apprehension pervades; the sun is hidden behind it; you forget completely that you are separate. In happiness you dance with joy; when sorrow comes, you cry. Whatever happens, you are one with it. You are not aware of your separateness. You must start learning how to separate it by and by. At every stage you have to disidentify yourself. While eating you must know that it is the body that feels the hunger, not you. You are only the knower. Consciousness feels no hunger. When you feel hot and you perspire, be sure you realize that it is the body which perspires. This does not mean that you should sit in the sun and get drenched with sweat. Let the body be comfortable, but maintain your awareness that the comfort is being provided for the body, you are only the knower.

Little by little, stand apart from everything that happens around you. It is very difficult; the gap is small and hard to see, the boundaries not clear at all. For millions of lives you have learned to identify. You never learned disidentification. You learned to identify with every situation. You have totally forgotten the art of disidentification, and this is your unconsciousness -- that you have learned to identify.

One morning found Mulla Nasruddin at the bedside of his friend who was in the hospital. The patient opened his eyes and said, "What happened, Nasruddin? I haven't the faintest idea."

"Last night you just had a little too much to drink," said the Mulla. "Then you stood in the window and said, you can fly. You tried to fly out of the third-story window. And this is the result -- your broken bones!"

The friend was shocked. "But you were with me, Mulla. Why did you allow it to happen? What kind of a friend are you?"

"Let's not talk about that," said Nasruddin. "At the time I was convinced that you could do it. If the cord of my pyjamas had not broken I would have taken off with you. But how could I keep my pyjamas on while I was flying? That is all that held me back. You weren't the only one drunk."

The meaning of unconsciousness is to be one with whatever comes to the mind. If the drunk thinks that he can fly, he cannot discriminate. There is no ability to discriminate left within him. He becomes one with the thought.

Your life is exactly like this. Granted, you do not fly out of windows and break any bones and land in the hospital, but if you observe very, very minutely you will find that you are in the hospital with all your bones broken. Your whole life is one long illness, which gives you nothing but pain and suffering. At every step you fall. At every step you have fallen. At every step you have hurt yourself, and behind all this devastation, there is only one reason: your unconsciousness. You fail to create a distance between you and your surroundings.

Just stand back a little. Move step by step. It is a long journey, because what has been built up over millions of lives cannot be so easily destroyed. However, it can be done. Whatever you have created is false. The Hindus call it maya. Maya means: the world which you are caught in is false. This does not actually mean that the sun and the stars, the mountains and the trees are false. it only means that your identification with your perception of them is false. You live with this identification. That is your world!

How can you break this association? First, start from your waking state. Because only in the waking state is a slight ray of consciousness. How can you start with dreams? It would be very difficult. And you do not know deep sleep at all, because all consciousness is lost there. Begin with the waking state, that is where your spiritual path begins. That is the first step. The second step is the dream state, and the third is deep sleep. The day you complete all the three steps you will naturally have stepped into the fourth: turiya, the state of self-realization.

Begin with the waking state. That is the path; that's why it is called wakefulness. Otherwise it is not wakefulness. What kind of wakefulness can it be when you are lost in the objects and you have no awareness of your own self? This is wakefulness in name. But it has been called the waking state. Actually we have called the buddhas "the awakened ones."

This is, however, a waking state in the sense that there is some possibility of awakening in this state. So start with the waking state. When you are hungry eat, but always remember that it is the body that is hungry, not you. If you hurt your leg, wash and clean the wound, apply medication, but always remember that it is the body that is hurt, not you. This much remembrance -- and you will find that ninety-nine percent of the pain has vanished. This slight knowledge, this little awareness removes so much of your suffering. One percent is bound to remain because the knowledge is not total. When knowledge becomes total all of the suffering disappears.

Buddha said that an awakened person is beyond suffering. You can cut off the limbs of such a person, you can throw him in the fire, you can kill him, but you cannot make him suffer, because he stands apart from all that is happening around him.

So start with the waking state. Walk on the road, but remember that you are not walking -- the body is walking. You have never walked. How could you? The soul has no feet to walk on. The soul has no stomach, how can it be hungry? The soul has no desires; all desires are of the body. The soul is desireless, therefore it does not walk. It simply cannot walk. It is only your body that walks. Try to keep this awareness as long as possible. Eventually you will get a joyous experience: walking on the road with full awareness that the body is walking and not you, you will suddenly feel that you are divided into two parts. One part is walking; the other part is not walking. One part eats; the other does not.

The Upanishads say: Two birds are sitting on the same tree. The one on the upper branch is quiet. It neither moves nor cries nor flies; it neither comes nor goes, it only sits serenely. The one on the lower branch is very restless. It moves from one branch to another branch. It jumps from one fruit to another. It is very restless. Both these birds are within you. You are the tree. The bird that is serene is called the witness.

Jesus says that you sleep in one bed, but there are two of you; one is dead and the other is eternal. You are the bed. When you sleep at night, within you there are both a lifeless corpse and eternal consciousness. Differentiate between the two; maintain the distance. It means hard work.

Start with the daytime. With the first ray of consciousness as you wake up in the morning, start the experiment. After a thousand attempts, perhaps one may succeed but even if one attempt is successful you will realize that the thousands of attempts were worthwhile. If even for a moment, you came to experience that he who walks is not you but he who is unmoving is you; he who is full of desires is not you, but that he who is forever desireless is you; that that which is perishable is not you, but the fountain of eternal nectar is you; -- if you become Mahavira or Buddha even for a moment or attain the state of Shiva, if this knowledge dawns on you for even a moment, you will have opened the doors of the supreme treasure. After that the journey becomes easy. After the taste, the journey is easy. All the difficulty comes before the taste!

Start with the daytime, and gradually you will succeed in carrying it through into your sleep. Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples to practice awareness during the daytime, and then he would tell them that just before going to bed they must remember: "This is a dream." You are still awake. There is no dream yet, but you have to keep repeating to yourself: "Everything I see is a dream." Touch the bed and intensify the feeling: "Whatever I touch is a dream." Touch one hand with the other, and experience: "All that I touch is a dream." You go to sleep sinking deep into this feeling. There will be a constant stream of feeling moving inside.

After a few days you will find that in the middle of a dream you will suddenly become aware that it is a dream. As soon as you remember that it is a dream, the dream breaks, because the dream works only in the absence of consciousness. Then you will be filled with bliss such as you have never known before. Your sleep will vanish, dreams will disappear, and a deep light will surround you. The dreams of an enlightened person disappear, because in sleep he also remembers that they are dreams.

Shankara's Vedanta propounds the concept that the universe is an illusion. This philosophy is an experiment of the same kind.

The sannyasin has to remember constantly that whatever is happening is a dream. While getting up in the morning, walking on the road, in the midst of the marketplace, he has to remember: "Everything is a dream." Why? Because this is the method. It is a process. If you experiment constantly for eight hours, this remembrance will penetrate so deeply that you will remember it even in the middle of the dream; you will remember that it is a dream.

At present you are unable to remember. Actually, you are doing it even now -- but in the reverse order. All your waking hours you feel and understand that whatever you see is real. And that is why dreams seem real at night, because the feeling is very strong. (Continued)

What can be more false than dreams? How many times on waking up have you realized their falsity, their uselessness? Yet every night you make the same mistake. Why? There must be a very deep reason behind this folly. The reason is: in your waking state you take everything to be true. If you take everything you see to be real, then how can the dreams you see at night appear to be illusory? You take them to be real.

The maya experiment is just the opposite. Whatever you see during the day, you remember that this is unreal. You forget again and again, but once again you pull yourself together. You remind yourself that everything you see is nothing but a huge drama in which you are only a spectator. You are not the actor, not the doer, but only a witness.

If you nurture this feeling, it becomes a constant flow within. Finally the dream disappears in the night, and this is a great attainment. If the dream is shattered, you are ready to take the third step. If the dream is shattered, you can take the third step of retaining consciousness in deep sleep. But right now this is difficult for you. It is not possible to do it all at once; you must proceed step by step.

When the dream breaks down, there is nothing to see. But in the daytime when the eyes are open, objects are very much visible. No matter how much you believe that it is illusory, the objects will go on existing. No matter how much Shankara says that the world is an illusion, you must use a door for exit, you cannot walk through walls. In spite of everything being an illusion, you will eat food and not pebbles. No matter how much you maintain that all is illusion, it requires your presence to pronounce these words. If you do not exist, who will utter them?

So no matter how much you strengthen the feeling that the outside world is illusion, the world of objects is going to remain. If someone hits your head with a stone, you will bleed. You may not feel sorry, you may not complain, you may say that it is maya, but the incident has occurred nevertheless.

But there is a uniqueness about dreams: they are all illusions. So an extraordinary experiment is carried out with dreams. The moment you come to know that dreams are illusory, they are lost; there is nothing to be seen. When the seen is lost, the seer comes into focus. As long as there is something to see, you look outside because the scene attracts. When the scene is no more and the screen is empty -- when even the screen is not there, you are left alone. This is why people meditate with closed eyes. To call the world maya, illusion, is a method.

The world is real. It does not depend on what you think. Even if it is a dream, it is the dream of Brahman, and not yours. But there are your personal dreams which take shape at night; therefore, when you shatter your own dreams a very revolutionary thing happens: the space then becomes empty. There is nothing to see. The play is over and it is time to go home. Now what will you do sitting there? This is the moment that the eyes suddenly turn in, for there is nothing left outside. So the energy that flowed out to the objects now turns inwards to the observer.

Meditation is energy turning towards oneself. And the moment energy turns inwards you can be conscious, even in sushupti, deep sleep. Because in deep sleep you exist but the world does not exist, the dreams do not exist. Your attention was entangled in observing the world and your dreams; you remained unconscious in deep sleep. Now this entanglement is uprooted. You have no connection with the seen and you can be without it. When the lamp burns, it does not care whether anyone passes through its light or not. Now your consciousness will turn inwards, and you will be awake even in deep sleep.

The experiment you have to make after you wake up from the dream is that do not to open your eyes when the dream disappears, because once the eyes open, the world of objects is present all around. The 'seen' comes back. So when you wake up from the dream, do not open your eyes. Keep looking intently at the void within. The dream has vanished. There is nothing now. So go on observing the void intently. In doing this you will find that your consciousness has turned inwards. Then you are awake even in deep sleep. This is what Krishna means when he says in the Gita that the yogi is awake even when everyone else sleeps. What is sleep to others is no sleep to the yogi. He is awake even in deep sleep.

Thus, when you see each of these states separately you invariably step into the fourth state. 'Turiya' means "the fourth" -- simply that! There is no need to give it any other meaning. It is enough just to refer to it as 'the fourth', because all meanings bind; all words are bondages. Only a gesture is enough. Because it is boundless and infinite.

As soon as you step outside the three states, you become God. Because you have entered the three, you are constricted. It is just as if from an open space you enter a tunnel and the tunnel gets narrower and narrower. By the time you reach the five senses it has become very narrow. Now you have to go backwards. As you go further and further back, your space increases. The day you find yourself outside the three, you are the great expanse of space. Then you are God Himself.

Take another example: You look at the sky through a telescope. Through a very small opening you concentrate your attention on something outside, and you become one with it. When you take your eyes off the telescope, you realize that you are not the telescope. Similarly, you are not the eyes, but you have concentrated on the eyes in millions of lives. You are not the ears, but you have been listening through them for infinite lives. You are not the hands, but you are so used to touching with your hands. You are tied to your telescope! You are like the scientist who carries his telescope everywhere and refuses to see without it. He is moving everywhere with his telescope fixed in his eyes. You keep telling him, "Throw away this telescope. You are not that!" But he can only see through a telescope and does not know that he can see otherwise. This is the state of forgetfulness. The method of destroying this forgetfulness is: start from the waking state and let it culminate in the deep sleep state.

THE WAKING STATE, THE DREAM STATE AND DEEP SLEEP -- KNOWING THESE THREE STATES SEPARATELY, THE FOURTH STATE IS KNOWN.

Start with the first and proceed gradually. The day you realize that you are fully conscious in deep sleep, then there is no difference between you and Mahavir or Buddha or Shiva.

Right now you are doing just the opposite: even in your waking state you are not fully awake. How will you be awake in deep sleep? You are under the illusion that you are awake, but you are awake in name only. You manage to carry out your day-to-day activities. You ride your bicycle or drive your car and think that you are awake.

But have you ever realized, how automatic your actions have become? The cyclist does not even have to think: now I have to turn left, now right. He can be completely wrapped up in his thoughts and the bicycle wheel turns automatically, out of sheer habit. The bicycle turns left, then turns right and he arrives home! There is no need to be aware while you ride the bicycle. Everything has become mechanical -- a habit. You are bound to reach home. The automobile driver goes on driving the car. He does not have to pay any attention to the car.

Our lives are ordinarily very routine. We go on treading the beaten path. We are no better than oxen at the oil mill. We walk the same track day in and day out. At the most, the tracks may be a little wider for one, and a little narrower for others; somewhat ugly for one and a little beautiful for the other, but they are tracks all the same. Your life circles around like the bullock of an oil mill. You get up in the morning and start on the track; by night you complete the circle. Again you get up in the morning... and the same rut! So regular is the repetition that you no longer have any need to be conscious about your activities. Everything happens as if in a trance. At the set moment you feel hungry; at the fixed time you feel sleepy, you go shopping at the appointed time. In this way you are spending your life on a fixed course without any consciousness.

When will you awaken? When will you shake yourself out of this? When will you give up the beaten track? When will you declare, "I am not going to follow this monotonous circle?" The day you consider wiggling out of it, you will have started the journey towards God.

Going to temples does not make you religious. That is also a part of the same rut. You go there because you have always gone; because your parents have always gone, and their parents have been visiting the same temple, too! You read the scriptures simply because your forefathers used to read them. It is the same rut again. Have you ever gone to a temple in full awareness? If you do, there is no further need of going to a temple; because wherever there is awareness, you will find His temple.

Consciousness is the temple. We see the Christian going regularly to church, the Sikh to the gurudwara, the Hindu to the temple. They are all tied by their tethers. No one can break this slumbering state of yours except yourself.

It is important for you to know that your waking state is just a stupor, whereas the deep sleep of a yogi is a fully awakened state. You are a yogi -- upside down! The day you become the reverse of what you are today, the quintessence of life will come within your grasp. Know the three stages separately, and the knower becomes separated from the three stages; you are sheer knowledge, nothing else. You are sheer consciousness -- but only when you break away from the three states.

I was reading about a Sufi fakir, Junnaid. When a person abused him he would say, "I shall answer you tomorrow." Then the next day he would say, "There is no need for any answer."

The man who had abused him would ask, "I abused you yesterday, why did you not reply yesterday? You are very strange." No one waits for a second when you abuse him. He retorts immediately."

Junnaid answered, "My master taught me not to hurry in anything. Take some time. I must wait a little when someone insults me. If I were to give an immediate answer, the heat of the happening would catch hold of me; the smoke would blind my eyes. So I have to wait and let the cloud pass. When twenty-four hours have passed and the skies are clear again, then I can give my reply in full consciousness. Now I realize how tricky my guru was. Because I have never been able to answer my opponents since then."

Is it possible to hold on to anger for twenty-four hours? It is impossible to maintain it for twenty-four minutes or even twenty-four seconds. The truth is that, even if you hold back and watch for a single second, the anger vanishes.

But you do not wait even for a moment. A person abuses you -- as if someone switches the button, and the fan starts whirring. There is not the slightest gap between the two, no distance! And you pride yourself in your alertness! You have no control of yourself. How can an unconscious person be master of himself? Anybody can push the button and goad him into action. Someone comes and flatters you, and you are filled with joy; you are happy. Someone insults you, you are full of tears. Are you your own master or anyone can manipulate you? You are the slave of slaves. And those who are manipulating are not their own masters either! And the irony is that everyone is expert in manipulating others and none of them is conscious. What greater insult can there be for your soul than the fact that anyone can affect you?

Mulla Nasruddin worked in an office. Everyone was dissatisfied with his work. Most of the time he was either dozing or was fast asleep. Everybody in the office was fed up with him. People started rebuking him. The boss also called him in and scolded him for his behavior. Finally, due to the trouble and humiliation, the Mulla thought it best to resign, because it was easier to resign than to change his ways.

Many people who run away from the world and embrace sannyas are actually resigning from the world for this very reason. Transformation is difficult, resigning is easier. Everyone in the office was relieved to hear the news. However, since he had been there for a long while and he was leaving of his own free will, they decided to give him a farewell party. They were so troubled by him and they could not get rid of him. He had become a burden. So they were really happy. They made elaborate arrangements, complete with sweets and refreshments. Each colleague spoke a few words of praise for the Mulla. After all, he was leaving. The Mulla was so overcome with emotion that tears came to his eyes. When it was his turn to speak he got up and said, "Friends, I am indeed touched by your love and affection. I did not know how much you cared for me. I cannot leave you now. I withdraw my resignation."

We are being manipulated. Often, all around, the whole world is manipulating each and every person. And the climate goes on changing. There are thousands of kinds of people. As a result there is a deep confusion inside you. This is bound to be, because you are not motivated by one person. Only he who is awakened within is motivated by one. There is a clarity in the life of such a man, a transparency. His life is clear and purposeful; it has a direction.

There is no direction in your life. There cannot be. You behave as if you are in a crowd that pushes you any way it pleases. Such a person has to keep moving. He cannot stand still for a moment. Someone pushes him to the right, he goes right; someone pushes him to the left, he goes left. Your whole life passes in this way, driven by the crowd. Ponder over this and you will come to understand. Somebody says something; you do accordingly. Then somebody else says something else and you do it. And then you are filled with a number of contradictions.

One of my acquaintances fell from a rickshaw and hurt himself. Then he was released from the hospital. Six months passed. When he was completely well, he still used the crutches. When I asked him whether he still was experiencing difficulty in walking, he said, "No."

"Then why don't you discard the crutches?" I inquired.

"You see," he said, "the doctor says I no longer need them, but my lawyers says I do, at least until the case has been decided in court. So you see my dilemma!"

Your lawyer says one thing and your doctor says something else; the wife says one thing and the husband says something else; the son says one thing, the father another -- all around there are millions of masters who drive you on. There are infinite masters, but you stand alone! You listen to one and all. You listen to anybody who suppresses you. And your personality fractures into thousands of pieces. Until you begin to listen to the inner voice, you cannot be an integrated whole.

I call him a sannyasin who has begun to heed the inner voice and is ready to stake everything on it. But you cannot hear the inner voice as long as you are unconscious. Until then whatever you might take to be the inner voice will not be the inner voice; it will be a voice from outside. The unconscious man doesn't know anything of this voice. Otherwise all politicians sitting in Delhi would have talked of this inner voice -- Indira, Giri: The voice of the soul! How can a sleeping person know it? How can you know which is the inner voice? The voice that satisfies you is the voice of your desires, but you call it your inner voice.

Only the awakened person has an inner voice. Once this voice comes within range of your hearing, all that is sinful, all that is impure and dirty, all the chaos and confusion within you, will cease at once. You will then realize what a collection of personalities you have been. You were not one but many, like a crowd in a marketplace or a stock exchange. You are the stock exchange of Delhi -- all kind of nonsense is going on! One cannot understand anything. A stranger won't be able to figure out what you are. There are all kinds of voices. And amidst all that din your own voice is completely lost.

The fourth state means recognizing the soul. Only when you break away from the first three states can you recognize the soul. Start with very small experiments. When anger arises, stop! What is the hurry? When you feel hatred, wait! There should be some interval. Reply only when you are fully conscious -- not until that. You will find that all that is sinful in life has fallen away from you; all that is wrong is banished forever. You will suddenly discover, there is no need to respond to anger. Perhaps you might feel like thanking the man who insults you. Because he has obliged you. He gave you an opportunity to awaken.

Kabir has said stay near the one who is critical of you. Look after him and serve him who is abusing you because it is he who gives you the opportunity to awaken.

All the occasions that drown you in unconsciousness can be turned into stepping stones to awareness if you wish so. Life is like a huge boulder lying in the middle of the road. Those who are foolish, see the stone as a barrier and turn back. For them the road is closed. Those who are clever, climb the stone and use it as a step. And the moment they make it a stepping stone greater heights are available to them.

A seeker should keep in mind only one factor, and that is: to utilize each moment to awaken awareness. Then be it hunger or anger or lust or greed, every state can be utilized towards awareness. If you go on accumulating awareness bit by bit, eventually you will have a good store of fuel within you. In the flame this fuel creates, you will find that you are neither awake nor dreaming nor in deep slumber; you are beyond and apart from all three.

CONSTANCY OF KNOWLEDGE IS THE WAKING STATE. TO BE AWARE OF EVERYTHING AROUND YOU IS THE WAKING STATE.

CHOOSING IS THE DREAMING STATE. The web of thoughts in the mind, the expanse of imagination and phantasy is the dreaming state.

UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS

CREATE THE ILLUSION OF DEEP SLEEP.

These are the three states. When we pass through the first state, we are one with it. When we reach into the second, we are one with that. When we reach in the third state, we become one with that. Therefore we cannot see these three separately. To see, we need a little distance, a perspective. There must be some space between you and the object. If you stand right against a mirror, you will not be able to see your reflection. A little distance is necessary. But you are so close to the waking, dreaming and sleeping states, that you become in fact one with them. You are colored by them. This habit of becoming one with others is so ingrained that we are not even conscious of it -- and this habit is being exploited.

If you are a Hindu and you are told to set fire to a mosque, you will think a thousand times about whether it is right to do so, because the mosque is dedicated to the same God to whom your temple is dedicated. Perhaps the mode of dedication is different, the method is different, the way is different -- but the destination is the same. And yet we find a Hindu mob setting fire to a mosque. If you are one of them you do not wait to think. You become one with the crowd and help burn the mosque. If you are questioned later, you yourself wonder how you could have brought yourself to do this. Alone you never would do it but in a crowd you will. Why? Because in a crowd you tend to lose yourself; it is an old habit.

No Muslim is as bad and ruthless alone as he is when he is in a mob. No Hindu alone is as bad and evil as he is in a mob. No one man has ever committed such sins as have been committed by crowds. Why? Because a crowd colors you. If the mob is angry you feel anger arising within you. If the crowd is weeping and wailing you begin to weep and scream also. If the crowd is happy you forget all your woes and become happy with the crowd.

Now observe: you go to a household where someone has died. Many people are crying. Suddenly you find that you also feel like crying. Perhaps you might think you are a very compassionate person, filled with love and pity, or perhaps you might think the tears come because of sympathy. You are wrong. Reflect: you were at home when the news came that this man had died. When you were alone you felt no love or compassion for the bereaved family. It is more likely you were annoyed: so he has died -- what's so special about that? Life and death happen all the time. But now I'll be expected to go to his house and show my sympathy, as if I had nothing better to do! And why did he have to die today, when I'm so busy?

That is the way you would have thought. But when you get to his house and find yourself amongst the mourning crowd, you find that your feelings have changed. You too will feel as the crowd does. But this feeling is not worth a penny; in fact, it is dangerous. It is the crowd that is affecting you. Beware of this feeling of sympathy that does not come from your heart.

You must have seen that people who are normally unhappy and weighed down with sorrow dance with joy at holi, the festival of colors. They dance, they sing, they throw colored powders at each other. What happens to these people who don't know what joy is in their ordinary lives? These same people normally move about like zombies, and they have started dancing. What has come over them? Once again, it is the color of the crowd.

The seeker should beware of the crowd. Search for your own voice, your own tune. The crowd has always been pushing and prodding you along. It can mould you into whatever form it wishes to. Why does this happen? It happens because you do not feel your separateness, and whenever you get the opportunity you promptly lose your separateness. You are forever ready to lose it. If sleep comes you lose yourself in sleep; if awake you lose yourself in wakefulness; if dreams come you lose yourself in dreams. If those around you are happy you are happy; if they are sad you are sad. Do you exist as a separate entity or are you just a center that gets lost in its surroundings? Do you have an existence, a center? Truly you have -- and that is the soul.

Awaken your being! Save yourself from drowning! This is why all religions are against alcohol -- which in itself is not bad -- for the simple reason that it is a device of losing oneself. All religions are in favor of awakening. He who is drinking alcohol is drowning. Religion is against all those things that drag you into oblivion, that make you unconscious. As it is, you are almost unconscious. You have a little ray of awakening, and you are eager to lose even that on the slightest pretext.

It is very surprising that you become happy whenever you lose your consciousness. It is impossible to find a greater fool than you. You lose your consciousness and you say, "It was lovely, it was sheer joy!" Why? Because your small ray of consciousness helps you see the problems of life. It makes you conscious of life and fills you with anxieties. It makes you aware of the fact that you are not aware. This small ray of consciousness reveals the darkness within you, which is already thick enough. You want to smother this ray so that you are not reminded of the darkness. So you take to alcohol or drugs or you join politics or some other activity of the crowd -- you lose yourself anywhere, in anything, in order to forget yourself.

In the West, psychologists advise people to forget themselves if they wish to remain healthy. In the East, the religious teachers tell you that you can be healthy only if you can awaken yourself. These are two contrary concepts, but both are meaningful. The Western psychologist accepts you as you are; then under these circumstances he tries to help you to live as best you can. So he is right when he says: "Forget yourself. To be more conscious is dangerous because you will be filled with anxiety because you will start seeing things as they are. And nothing in life is as it should be; everything is in confusion and chaos. So the best thing is to shut the eyes and forget about it. What is the need to look at all the problems?

But the Eastern master does not accept you as you are. He says: "You are ill, you are diseased, you are confused and bewildered. Even if your anxieties increase and you are more restless, it does not matter; this is the way to transformation, revolution.

It is just like this: a man suffers from cancer and there is no cure for him, so he is given morphine to help him forget the pain. But the Eastern teachers say that morphine cannot transform life. Awaken the person -- then only is transformation possible. Man as he is, is in neither the initial nor the ultimate stage of his journey. He has not even started his journey; he is standing outside the gate. He has not entered yet. There is the possibility of supreme bliss, but not in the state in which are you now -- sleepy, drowsy.

Understand the difference between happiness and bliss. Happiness is the state in which the faint ray of consciousness awakened within you, is also put to sleep. Then you are not conscious of any pain. Ananda, bliss, is the state in which the slight ray of your consciousness becomes the vast sun, and darkness is banished completely. Happiness is negative -- insensitivity to pain. You have a headache; you take an aspirin. It gives you happiness, not bliss. This tablet helps you forget the headache; it makes you insensitive to the pain in your head.

You are ill; you are distressed; life is filled with problems. You take to drink -- and everything seems to become alright. A troubled man's steps lead to the tavern; when he returns there is a song on his lips. This way you lose your small ray of awareness and purchase so-called happiness. But this will not give you bliss. Because happiness is the non-remembrance of sorrow, and bliss is the remembrance of the soul. And this is not forgetting but total remembrance. Kabir calls it surati, which is constant, continuous remembering.

This sutra will lead you towards total remembrance. So beware! Keep away from all that makes you drunk or insensitive or unconscious. There are so many easy ways of becoming unconscious, and we are so thoroughly possessed by them, that we are not even aware of them.

One man is mad after eating; he keeps on eating. It may not have occurred to you, but he is making the same use of food as another makes of alcohol. Excess food brings on sleep. The more you eat, the deeper you sleep. The day you fast, you cannot sleep well. Food brings on drowsiness. So a man who indulges in eating all day long, is seeking forgetfulness through food.

One man's obsession is ambition. He will not rest until he has amassed millions of rupees. Till then he is like a madman. Day and night, may it be dawn or dusk, it does not matter, there is only one calculation in his mind -- ten million! He is completely dedicated to his calculation. He is not bothered by anything else. His eyes are focused on the millions. Till the day he reaches his target, he will be gripped by anxiety. Then he will discover that it was all in vain. He has attained his millions. What next?

Three men were locked in the same cell in a lunatic asylum. They had been friends previously and all became insane at about the same time. It was quite possible that they were affected by one another's company. A psychologist came to study them. He inquired from the doctor in charge what was the trouble with the first one. He was told that this man was trying to undo a knot in a rope. He was unsuccessful, and he lost his head.

"What about the second?"

"He succeeded in untying the knot, and that is how he went mad."

"And the third?" the psychologist asked.

"He is the one who tied the knot."

One is busy tying the knot, another is untying it. Some succeed, some fail, but this is not the question, because all are mad. Why are people involved in such useless activities? To avoid encountering one's own self! These are tricks to evade one's own self. If you are not ambitious, if you do not want to fight the elections or hanker after wealth, how will you avoid meeting your own self? At some point you will have to encounter yourself. Everyone is afraid of this encounter. This fear makes you tremble.

You hear a great deal about knowing the self, the soul. But if you understand yourself, you will realize how many tricks you employ to avoid encountering the soul. The buddhas say: When the soul is known bliss reigns and nectar showers. Kabir says: Clouds of nectar thunder and nectar showers on you. But this happens at the very end. In the beginning you have to go through a lot of pain and suffering. You have to destroy every deception you have created over infinite lives, and each of them is difficult to part with, because deception had given you an illusion of comfort, a sweet drowsiness in which we lose ourselves. And now we have to shatter it! Shattering it is very painful. Without shattering it you will never be able to reach there, where clouds fill with nectar and bliss pours in torrents.

This journey towards the goal is called tapascharya, practice. Begin with the waking state. Then carry your practice into the dream state and then into deep slumber.

Choosing is dreaming. When the mind is filled with dreams that is the dream state. Do not think that you only dream at night; you also dream in the daytime. Sitting here and listening to me does not necessarily imply that you are hearing what I say. You hear but you are also weaving dreams inside. A constant stream of dreams keeps flowing within you. Even when awake, dreams keep turning within you. Close your eyes and look inside and you will always find something going on.

It is just like we see the stars at night, and they disappear in the daytime; but it is only the light of the sun that hides them. So do not think that they disappear during the day. They are very much there. If you go down a deep well and look up you will be able to see them. You need darkness to see the stars. They are not visible because of the sunlight.

The same is the case with dreams. It is not that dreams are seen only at night, but at night the eyes are closed, darkness comes, and the dreams stand out against this darkness. In the daytime the eyes are open and all your attention is taken up by a hundred other things. But the dreams keep happening none the less. You simply do not see them. Shut your eyes and you begin daydreaming at once. There is a constant under-current which has to be broken. And only if you succeed in breaking it in the daytime, can you break it in the night; otherwise it is not possible.

All mantras are devices to break this under-current. A person is given a mantra by his guru. He tells him, "Repeat it within while you go to the market, sell your goods. Let the sound of the chanting resound inside." So this man attends to his daily business but lets the mantra flow within at the same time. What does this mean? The energy which previously was being used up in creating dreams is now converted into a stream of Ram-Ram. So now the chanter creates his own dream within himself. Outwardly he attends to his worldly duties; inwardly he keeps up a constant remembrance of Ram-Ram... This does not lead him to Rama, but it will help him break the dream chain. The day you find that there is an incessant flow of Ram-Ram instead of dreams, you will know that you have succeeded in breaking the chain of dreams during the daytime.

So the success of the mantra can only be gauged in dreams, never during the day. How is it possible? If you repeat the mantra throughout the day, there will not be any dream at night, the chant will flow into your sleep. It will be much more intense than you can imagine.

Swami Ram used to repeat this mantra Ram-Ram. Once he was a guest of his friend Sardar Puran Singh. They were alone in a small hut high up in the Himalayas. There was not a soul around for miles and miles. One night Sardar could not sleep well because of the heat and the mosquitoes. And what did he find? The sound of Ram-Ram hovered in the hut. He was a little frightened. Could there be someone apart from himself and his sleeping friend in the room? Swami Ram was fast asleep. The Sardar got up, took the lamp and looked everywhere inside and out. There was no one. He came back into the hut, and to his surprise he realized that the sound was louder in the room than outside. He raised the lamp and held it over Swami Ram's face: Is he awake and chanting the mantra? He was fast asleep. In fact he was snoring. And, wonder of wonders, the sound became louder as he approached the swami. He brought his ear closer to Swami Ram and found that each pore in his body was vibrating with the sound Ram-Ram.

This happens when remembrance becomes very intense. A great deal of energy is used up in creating dreams. You do not get them without a price. Dreams are worthless in themselves, but the price you pay is immense because you spend the entire night in dreaming. Recently, in the West there has been a lot of research on dreams. The scientists say that a normal, healthy person dreams eight dreams each night. Each dream lasts around fifteen minutes. This means that every night, at least two hours are spent in dreaming. But this is the case in a completely healthy man who has no mental disorder. Such a healthy person is not easy to find. Generally people dream for six out of the eight hours they sleep. The constant flow of dreams eats up a large amount of your energy. It is not for free! You purchase it at the cost of your life.

The mantra centralizes this energy around Ram, Krishna, Christ, Om, or whatever you like. Any word will do. It is not necessary that it be God's name. Your own name can be equally useful.

The English poet, Tennyson, writes in his memoirs that he stumbled upon a method in his childhood. When he could not sleep at night he would repeat over and over to himself, "Tennyson, Tennyson, Tennyson..." and he would fall asleep. As he grew older, he realized that it was a wonderful device. Whenever he was restless he would repeat to himself, "Tennyson, Tennyson, Tennyson..." and his mind would regain its peace and equilibrium. So he used his own name as a mantra.

Your own name can yield the same result -- but it won't, because you don't have that much faith in your name. Whether you say Ram or Rahim, it makes no difference. The question is not one of names; words make no difference. All words are the same, and all names are the name of God, including yours. When any name is thus repeated, it produces a musical note within and the dream energy dissolves in it. Mantras are instrumental for destroying dreams. Nobody has attained God only by repeating a mantra, but destroying dreams is a great step towards the attainment of God.

Mantra is a method, an instrument, a hammer to shatter dreams. And what are dreams? They too are nothing but words, and that is why a hammer of words can break them. There is no need to use an actual hammer. Dreams are unreal, so a pseudo-hammer will do the trick. A genuine medicine is dangerous for pseudo-ailment; only an imaginary medicine will help remove the false disease.

What are dreams? They are thought-waves. And what are mantras? They are willpower, which is also a form of dream. But dreams are impermanent, changing; whereas the mantra is constant and one. Gradually the dream energy is absorbed in the mantra. The night you find that there are no dreams and you hear the constant music of the mantra in your sleep, you will know that you have conquered the dream state. The illusion is now broken and truth has begun to unfold. Then you can enter the deep sleep state.

But you do just the opposite. You strengthen your thought-waves. You are seized by worthless thoughts and you co-operate with them. You are sitting alone, there is nothing to do and you start thinking of fighting the coming election. The dream begins! Nothing will please you short of reaching the president's chair. You have become a president in your dream. There are felicitations and you are enjoying them thoroughly! You never stop to think -- what kind of stupidity is this! What are you doing? You are just giving energy to worthless fantasies. Your mind is filled with useless illusions of this kind.

If we examine human life in detail, we will find that ninety-nine percent of the life is lost in fruitless dreams like this. Some dream of wealth, others of power, and others of various conquests. What will you gain even if you attain them all?

There was a great President of America, Calvin Coolidge; he was a very serene person by nature. It must have been a total accident that he became president because such serene people can never reach such a turbulent position, which can only be won after a mad race. The greater mad defeats the lesser mad and makes it to the top. How Coolidge reached there is a miracle. It is said that he was so quiet by nature that he hardly spoke at all. It is said, that there were days when he would not utter more than five or ten words!

At the end of his term his friends implored him to run for office again. Everyone was eager to have him there again. He refused. People asked, "Why? All the countrymen are in your favor." He said, "The first time was a mistake. What have I gained from it all? I will not waste another five years of my life. And there is nothing ahead of the president. I have experienced that position. There is no further to go. Had there been something, my dream would have continued."

You do not realize it, but no man is a greater failure than the one who has realized his dreams. Because at the very edge of success he finds that all he struggled for, all that he toiled so hard to reach, had nothing to offer. But the successful man hides his disappointment and defeat from others who, being equally foolish, are struggling to reach where he stands. If all the people in the world who have attained success were to be honest and declare the futility of their attainments, many of these mad races arising from their dreams would stop instantly. But the successful man cannot do that, for it would hurt his ego to declare that he had attained nothing after a life-long struggle. Instead he exaggerates the pleasures of his achievements. He whose tail is cut, arranges for others to lose theirs too; otherwise, he would be ashamed of himself that he is the only one without a tail.

Whenever the dream current begins, become awake and alert, and watch: What am I doing? All stories of Sheikh Chilli in the children's books apply to you. Your mind is Sheikh Chilli, and as long as you keep dreaming you will remain Sheikh Chilli. The meaning of Sheikh Chilli is one who dreams useless dreams and then takes them to be true. God forbid that these dreams ever come true! They will demand tremendous energy.

If your dreams are realized you will find that you have not achieved anything. Your hands are full of dust. All successes of the mundane world turn to ashes. By the time you have attained them, your life has passed by and there is no way to turn back. And you are left with no alternative but to hide your failures; that your life was not spent in vain, you have attained something. Your life was fruitful.

Thought-waves are nothing but dreams. Do not strengthen them. When the dream starts running within, shake yourself and break the dream as quickly as you can. Mantras can be useful. We shall talk in detail later how they can be tools for breaking dreams. Mantra definitely shatters dreams.

UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS IS DEEP SLEEP.

In it, everything is lost. There is no discrimination, no wisdom, no awareness -- either within or without. You are like a rock, in deep trance. Just think of it, how restless your life must be! It is only when you sleep deeply, do you get up in the morning and say what an enjoyable sleep you had. Just think about it: what hell your life must be that you find happiness only in the oblivion of sleep, when you are unconscious. The rest of the time you are filled with pain and suffering.

You only feel at ease after a good sleep, and sleep means nothing but unconsciousness. But you are right. For you, it is more than enough, because your life is one long tale of worries, anxieties, tensions and turmoil. You rest for a while and you feel fulfilled, but in reality there is nothing to feel fulfilled about.

Sleep means where there is nothing -- neither the world within nor the world without. Everything is lost in darkness. Yes, you certainly feel rested, but of what use is that rest if the next morning you fall in the same rut? The energy you gain by the night's rest will be used in creating fresh tensions, fresh anxieties. You will rest every night and you will create new tensions every day. If only you were to realize this small fact -- in unconscious slumber you get so much pleasure, because there is no tension, no anxiety there. You forget all your problems when you slip into this unconscious state. Imagine how much pleasure and joy will be attained on the day that your worries and confusions fall away and you are filled with awareness. This is what is referred to as moksha, nirvana, brahmananda.

Sleep gives you the feeling of having rested and fills you with pleasure, because all chaos and confusion subsides in it. Then, when these are actually dissolved and you remain in complete relaxation all twenty-four hours of the day -- the place you sometimes reach in deep sleep -- imagine what bliss you will experience. It is a state of perpetual serenity! Just think about it! Because samadhi is like deep sleep with a slight difference: there is awareness. In sleep there is no awareness; in samadhi you are fully aware. The fourth state is like deep sleep -- with only one difference: in deep sleep there is darkness, while in the fourth state there is light.

Suppose you are brought to this garden in an unconscious state, on a stretcher. The rays of the sun will touch you, because they are not unconscious, because you are unconscious. The breeze will play over you, caress you because they are not unconscious, you are unconscious. The flowers will spread their fragrance. The freshness of early morning dew-drops will touch you because they are not unconscious, you are unconscious.

Everything will happen around you but you will be unaware of it; yet when you regain your consciousness you will say, "How restful the sleep was." All these factors contribute to your restfulness -- the sunrays, the fragrance of the flowers, the cool breeze -- you have no knowledge of them. Yet you say: What restful sleep!

Now consider the other way. Suppose you are sitting in the garden in full awareness. The morning sun sends down its cosy warmth, the flowers fill the air with breath-taking perfumes, the cool breeze creates music in the leaves of the trees as it rustles through them, the dew glitters on the petals. Amidst all of this, can you imagine the joy, the bliss....!

In deep sleep we reach exactly where Buddha, Mahavir and Shiva reach in full awareness. Even from your deep sleep you bring back the message: How blissful! Although you cannot express this happiness clearly -- what it was like, how it was. You cannot define it, you cannot bring the taste with you. So after a good night's rest, you get up fresh and cheerful. You get a little glimpse of buddhahood on the faces of people who sleep very deeply, especially little children, for their minds are not yet filled with tensions. As your worries increase, your sleep decreases. Watch a little child as it is about to get up in the morning. His face bears the freshness of the Buddha. Something blissful has happened within him, though he is unaware of it.

All tensions fade in deep sleep but there is no wisdom. In samadhi -- that is, in the fourth state -- all tensions fade, but wisdom remains. Wisdom plus deep sleep equals samadhi.

HE WHO ENJOYS ALL THREE IS THE SUPREME HERO.

He who is the experiencer of all three states -- waking, dreaming and deep sleep -- and who is apart and separate from them; he who passes through them, but does not identify himself with them; he who goes beyond the three and considers himself different and apart -- he is a warrior, a conqueror.

Viresha means the warrior of warriors, the conqueror, the supreme hero. Viresh is one of the names of Shiva. Mahavir also means the great warrior. We have called 'Mahavir' only those who attained samadhi. We do not call a person a conqueror just because he has scaled Everest or reached the moon, it is a courageous act but these are not the ultimate heights to be reached. We call him a Viresh, a Mahavir, who has attained the soul. What Everest can be higher than God? He who attains the ultimate is a Mahavir, a great warrior. We accept nothing less. What if you have reached the moon? It has merely opened new vistas for exploration: Mars, Jupiter, and so on and so forth. The universe is boundless!

We call him Mahavir who has reached where there is no further to go. Why do we refer to him as Mahavir? Because there is no act more courageous than the act of attaining one's own self. There is no journey that calls for such courage and fearlessness as the journey to the self. Because the path is full of difficulties that are encountered nowhere else. It requires the maximum austerity.

The journey to the self is the most difficult journey. It is like walking on the razor's edge. This is perhaps why you run away from the self and get involved in mundane things. And this is perhaps why, even though knowledge of the self attracts the mind you do not have the necessary courage. Some fear grips you.

It is very difficult. You will have to walk alone. The most difficult part of it is that in this world, everywhere you can go with others. However, there is one place where you will have to go alone. No wife, no brother, no friend, not even the guru, can go along with you. At best the guru can show the way. Buddha shows the way. That is all! You must go alone!

We are afraid to be alone. There are so many people around us, so many dreams. Some of these dreams are very pleasant, very interesting. A few outstanding people break this web of dreams and set out on the path. Of these, many turn back halfway. One in a million proceeds on the journey, for it is an arduous, difficult path. Among all of these, perhaps one person reaches. That is why such a one is called Viresh, warrior of warriors.

The fourth, that lies hidden beyond the three, and within you, is the Everest. That is where you have to reach. And the way to reach it is to be wakeful in your waking state. Right now you are in a lukewarm state. Become a burning flame of awareness so that its heat enters your very breath. Be awake in dreams so that dreams may break. Be so alert in the dreaming state that a ray of your awareness pierces the state of deep sleep. The day you enter deep sleep, with this little flame of awareness, you will have opened the doors of the state of Viresh; you will have given your first knock on the temple door.

The bliss is infinite, but you will have to cross the path in between. You must pay the price. The greater the bliss, the greater the price. There are no bargains.

Many look for bargains (compromises?). They seek short-cuts, and they find the gurus to exploit them. The guru tells them to wear this amulet and everything will come to pass, or that it is enough just to have faith in him, or demands that they give a certain amount to charity, perform good deeds or build a temple. These are 'bargains' that lead nowhere; they merely mislead you. You must follow the path.

There are some who try even cheaper methods. They take hemp or hashish and believe they are in samadhi, that they have attained knowledge. There are thousands of sannyasins and sadhus who take drugs, like opium and hemp. The West is very much influenced by them, and they have discovered even better drugs, like l.s.d., hashish, marijuana. They also have injections that take you into samadhi. Like instant coffee, they now make instant samadhi.

If only it were so easy! If only someone had attained under the influence of drugs, then the world would have become an enlightened place. It is not that easy, but the mind hunts for cheaper ways. The mind wants to bypass the long, arduous journey and enter directly into samadhi. That cannot be, for salvation lies in the traversing of the path. The path is not a readymade path; it is also your development.

So this is the difficulty. In the outside world the journey can be shortened. The plane flies directly from London to Bombay, with no stops in-between, but the man who boards at London is the same as the man who gets down at Bombay. This man is the same as he was before. No growth has taken place in him during the flight. But this is an outward journey. In the inner journey, one cannot reach the destination without growing from what he was at the point of departure. Those who say that it is possible are simply deceiving you because it is not a journey from one place to another place, it is a journey from one state of being to another state of being. You have to grow in the process of the journey because it is in that growth that you will be cleaned, purified and transformed. It is in the agony of the process of the journey that you will grow. This pain, this agony is indispensable. If you seek short cuts you are only deceiving yourself.

There is a great search for short cuts in the West, therefore people like Mahesh Yogi make a big impact there. The reason for this is that Mahesh Yogi says, "Whatever I am saying is like a jet-speed." He gives a small mantra which the seeker must repeat for fifteen minutes daily. This is all there is to be done and you attain. There is no need to change your behavior, your lifestyle, nor is it necessary to give up anything in the outside world. This is all: relax every day for fifteen minutes and repeat the mantra. The mantra is everything.

The mantra is valuable, but it is not everything. The mantra can destroy dreams but it cannot give the truth. Destruction of dreams is part of the way to the destination of truth, but if anyone thinks that repeating the mantra is sufficient, that telling of beads is enough, he is only childish. This person is not yet worthy even to talk about the path, let alone attain the goal.

The path is difficult, but it has to be travelled. Therefore the sutra says that enormous effort is the path. Will is required to undertake such a mighty effort. You must be willing to stake your own self in the effort. Liberation can be bought only if you stake yourself totally. Nothing less will do. If you give something else, it will not do; you have not paid the full price. Only when you give completely of yourself is the price enough and you attain.

Question - Beloved Master, Please share with us your vision of the benefits of the Arts for our process of growing towards ourselves, in therapy, meditation, worship.

Osho - The arts can be immensely helpful in therapy, in spiritual growth, in your meditations. But it is taking a hard and long way unnecessarily. The shortcut is: first, meditation, and then out of meditation comes creativity of its own accord. Otherwise, it is a long journey; even one life may not be enough.

For example, the paintings of Picasso are nothing but his nightmares, as if somebody is not painting but vomiting. It has helped him to relieve himself of his tensions, schizophrenia, paranoia and all kinds of mental repressions. But it is not of much use to you. In fact, if you go on looking at a Picasso painting for a long time, you will feel sick, because it is vomiting. You will start feeling nauseous. This is not real art.

The people who created the Taj Mahal -- that is real art. They were Sufi mystics who knew what meditation is. And they created the Taj Mahal in such a way that if on every full-moon night, exactly at nine o'clock in the evening, you just sit looking at the most beautiful architecture in the whole world, you will find suddenly you are becoming silent, peaceful, serene. Something is transpiring between you and the Taj Mahal.

Gurdjieff used to call the Taj Mahal, objective art. It means: created by people who are fully aware, able to create something which can help people to grow. He would not call Picasso an objective artist. Picasso is a subjective artist, he is just throwing up whatsoever is in his mind. It is not going to help anybody. Picasso feels relieved, but for how long? Soon he will gather tensions again. Soon he will be again in a state of insanity, and then he will paint. Painting is a release for him.

The people who built the Taj Mahal -- it is not a release for them; it is their experience. And they are trying somehow to make something which can also give you the same experience -- at least a glimpse of it.

In India there are many places of objective art, and it is obvious why they are in India -- because for ten thousand years the country has been involved with meditative techniques. The caves of Ajanta and Ellora... there are many caves; the whole mountain has been carved. Great caves have been made into the mountain. A line of caves -- perhaps thirty or thirty-five, and each cave has its own beauty; not just beauty, but its own meditative fragrance from a different angle.

In the last cave, Buddha is lying down just before he died. It is a long statue -- perhaps thirty feet long. Just sitting by the side, alone in the cave, you can again feel something that must have been felt by people who saw Buddha dying -- the release of his light, the release of his soul becoming universal. Somehow the statue gives you an insight into it.

Tourists miss it. It is not something that you simply go in and have a look and then rush into another cave. That is simply idiotic. And most of the tourists are idiots. Most of them are old women having nothing to do. Perhaps they have finished their husbands -- now there is nobody even to nag. India is full of old women from all over the world.

Tourists cannot understand it. You have to sit down. You have to be quiet and silent. The cave is very cool -- remains cool even in the hottest summer -- and outside is the lush green valley. If you can sit for an hour or more, then perhaps some glimpses of objective art will be felt.

There is one cave in Ajanta which has been made of special stones which are musical. You can just hit them with your hand, with your finger, and you will be surprised that they resound just like a guitar. If you are really a good musician, you can create any music on those pillars in the cave, on the walls of the cave.

But if you are not a musician, no problem: you simply sit there. Once in a while a breeze comes in, and with the breeze there is a murmuring music in the cave. And it is so soothing. I have never known anything that can be so soothing to your mind, to your heart, to your body -- so relaxing. This is objective art.

But your question is, "Can art help somehow in being more healthy spiritually? Can it become a therapy?" Yes, it can; vomiting is a therapy. And when you are feeling nauseous, it is good to vomit, have a good vomit, and you will feel clean. The nausea is gone. But this is not something of great help. Please go vice versa: first meditation, then out of meditation there is a spontaneity of creativity.

Right now you don't know even what areas of creativity can bring out your potential for spiritual growth. To paint? -- everybody is not a painter. To write poetry? -- everybody is not a poet. To play music? -- everybody is not a musician. How are you going to choose in your confusion? But if you are silent through meditation, utterly silent, suddenly you feel a tremendous urge to create something, to become a musician.... It comes spontaneously!

I know one of the great musicians in India -- it is inconceivable, the way he created music. You know the name of Ravi Shankar -- Ravi Shankar married that great musician's daughter; Ravi Shankar is his disciple. He was capable of creating music with anything. He would start hitting just two pieces of steel, and you will be surprised how many and how beautiful were the sounds he could create out of it. He was a born musician.

A meditator finds his potential and starts moving towards it. Then poetry or dance or sculpture -- whatever happens spontaneously -- is objective art. It is your contribution. It will help you to grow spiritually. It will be your real therapy, because growth is therapy. It will give you authentic spiritual health. And, by the way, it will help many other people who can for a few moments sit silently, listen to your music, or watch your dance, or see your painting. They will be immensely benefited because your art will give them a certain direction towards meditation.

So my suggestion is, everything starts with meditation. And if you try other things, you will be going on a sorry-go-round for many lives, round and round -- I cannot call it a merry-go-round -- but you will never reach to your center. The first and the foremost act of a sannyasin is to reach to his center, and then leave everything to that experience to explode in its own way. Then you are natural. Then whatever you do is helpful to you and helpful to others. This is the only love, compassion that you can share with humanity.

Source - Osho Book "from Bondage to Freedom"[/B]

heartbeatsalute

01-05-2012, 10:24 PM

are we not both the dreamer and the dream?

have you been reading Osho mostly alone?

have you studied under anyone?

have you ever been to any satsangs?

yes im nosy. lol

Read alone ,some meditations in groups sometimes, studied under no one but life itself, yeah I've been to satsangs, some meditation camps.
http://thumb18.shutterstock.com/thumb_small/253651/253651,1248105699,2/stock-photo-cow-eats-grass-33959485.jpg Don't worry, nosy people there too LOL

Osho on Vilayat Khan - This has to be understood: everybody wants to be special, extraordinary -- a great musician, a great dancer, a great poet -- but everybody cannot manage. It needs a long, arduous discipline to become a great musician.

I know a great Indian musician, Vilayat Ali Khan, one of the best sitarists in the world. He used to practice from early morning, nearabout four o'clock, up to nine or ten o'clock -- five to six hours every day. He was staying with me, and just sitting in the garden, I asked him, "Now you are world famous; what is the need to practice?"

He said, "You don't know. If I don't practice one day, I can see the difference. If I don't practice two days, then those who understand music can see the difference. If I don't practice three days, even those who don't understand music can see the difference. It is such a subtle phenomenon that you have to continue to revive it, to live it, to go deeper and deeper into it. You cannot stop."

So music is an arduous discipline; sculpture is the same... any creative activity.

Source - Osho Book "The Path of The Mystic"

Osho on Hazrat Vilayat Ali Khan

Hazrat Vilayat Ali Khan

Osho on the books He Loved - Seventh: The seventh is not an enlightened man like Rinzai, but very close. Hazrat Inayat Khan, the man who introduced Sufism to the West. He did not write a book, but all his lectures have been collected into twelve volumes. Here and there they are beautiful. Forgive me, I cannot say they are all beautiful, but here and there, once in a while, particularly when he is talking about a Sufi story, he is beautiful.

He was also a musician; in that way he was really a maestro. He was not a master in the spiritual world, but in the world of music he certainly was. But once in a while he flew to the spiritual, he rose beyond the clouds... to fall back with a thud, of course. He must have suffered from... Devaraj, what do you call it? Multi-fracture? Multiple fractures, perhaps that's the right word.

The son of Hazrat Inayat Khan. His name is well known to the seekers in the West: Hazrat Vilayat Ali Khan. He is a beautiful man. He is still living. The father is dead, Vilayat is alive, and when I say alive I really mean it -- not only breathing... breathing of course, but not only breathing. All his books are also included hereby. Vilayat Ali Khan is also a musician, just like his father, only of a higher quality, of a greater depth. He is more profound... and -- listen to this pause -- more silent too.

Source - Osho Book "Books I have Loved"

Osho on Vilayat Khan - I have heard Vilayat Khan, another great sitarist, perhaps a little greater than Ravi Shankar, but he is not an innovator. He is utterly classical, but listening to him even I loved classical music. Ordinarily I don't love anything classical, but he plays so perfectly you cannot help yourself. You have to love it, it is not in your hands. Once a sitar is in his hands, you are not in your own hands. Vilayat Khan is pure classical music. He will not allow any pollution. He will not allow anything popular. I mean "pop," because in the West unless you say pop nobody will understand what is popular. It is just the old "popular" cut short -- badly cut, bleeding.

I have heard Vilayat Khan, and I would like to tell you a story about one of my very rich disciples -- that is circa 1970, because since then I have not heard anything of them. They are still there. I have inquired about their well-being, but sannyas has made so many people afraid, particularly the rich ones.

This family was one of the richest in India. I was amazed when the wife told me, "You are the only man to whom I can say it: for ten years I have been in love with Vilayat Khan."
I said, "What is wrong with that? Vilayat Khan? -- nothing is wrong."

She said, "You don't understand. I don't mean his sitar, I mean him."
I said, "Of course -- what would you do with his sitar without him?"

She hit her head with her hand and said, "Can't you understand anything at all?"
I said, "Looking at you, it seems not. But I do understand that you love Vilayat Khan. It is perfectly good. I am just saying that there is nothing wrong it it."

At first she looked at me in disbelief, because in India, if you say such a thing to a religious man -- a Hindu wife falling in love with a Mohammedan musician, singer or dancer -- you cannot have his blessing, that much is certain. He may not curse you, but most likely he will; even if he can forgive you, even that is too modern, ultra-modern.

"And," I said to her, "there is nothing wrong in it. Love, love whomsoever you want to love. And love knows no barriers of caste or creed."

She looked at me as if I were the one who had fallen in love, and she was the saint I was talking to. I said, "You are looking at me as if I have fallen in love with him. That too is true. I also love the way he plays, but not the man." The man is arrogant, which is very common in artists.

Ravi Shankar is even more arrogant, perhaps because he is a brahmin too. That is like having two diseases together: classical music, and being a brahmin. And he has a third dimension to his disease too, because he married the great Alauddin's daughter; he is his son-in-law.

Alauddin was so respected that just to be his son-in-law was enough proof that you are great, a genius. But unfortunately for them, I had also heard Masto. And the moment I heard him I said, "If the world knew about you they would forget and also forgive all these Ravi Shankars and Vilayat Khans."

Osho : You do not exist even in dream. You must sometimes have dreamed a dream within a dream. You dream that you are going to bed, you have fallen asleep and you are dreaming a dream.

There is an old Chinese story: A woodcutter was cutting wood in a jungle. He was tired, so he came down from the tree and fell asleep. He dreamed that nearby lay buried a great treasure of diamonds and gold in huge pots that were lightly covered with dirt. In his dream he thought that he would come at night and remove the treasure quietly.

If he removed it in the daytime he might be caught. Hewas a poor man and the treasure was worth millions. When he awoke, he buried a stick to mark the place and returned home. When it became dark, he went back to the spot. He found the stick in place but the pots had been removed. He went back and told his wife, ”I don’t understand whether I dreamed about the treasure or actually saw it. The stick is there all right, and there are holes where the pots were, so it is certainly not just a dream. But someone has removed the pots.”

His wife replied, ”It must be a dream. You must also have dreamed that you went out at night and saw the stick in the ground, and that there was an empty place where the pots were supposed to be. So go back to sleep and sleep in peace.” But it happened that another man also dreamed that he saw these very pots buried in the same place, and that a woodcutter had buried a stick to mark the place. When he got up from his sleep he ran to the place. He found the stick in the ground and also the vessels underneath!

He removed the pots and brought them home. He told his wife, ”I cannot understand whether I dreamed a dream or I actually saw a vision. Whatever it is, I have brought the pots home. They are proof that it is not just a dream. I must actually have seen the woodcutter burying the stick and therefore I knew where the treasure was.” His wife said, ”The pots are here. That much is clear. But if you actually saw the woodcutter marking the spot, it isn’t right that we should keep this treasure.

Take the pots to the king and let him decide.” He was an honest man, so he took the pots to the king’s court where the woodcutter had already lodged a complaint. The king was perplexed. Finally he told them, ”It is very difficult to decide whether you were asleep or awake, so I shall divide the treasure equally between you both, for the pots are very much there.” So he divided the treasure between them. That night the king told his wife, ”A very strange thing happened today: Two men dreamed the same dream.

Now it is difficult to decide whether they dreamed or whether they really saw the treasure. But the pots of treasure were actually there, so I divided them equally between them.” The queen said, ”Go to sleep, you must be dreaming.” For thousands of years this was discussed in China – did they dream it or not? Who actually dreamed? But this is what happens by the time we reach the end of life. All of life seems like a dream. It is difficult to decide whether the stick was really there and whether the pots were really buried;

whether the wife and children ever existed, or friends and foes; whether there was poverty or riches; whether there was conflict and competition; whether we really lost or won, were successful or unsuccessful. At the time of death all events pass before a man like a dream. Did we really live, or was it only a dream? Those who have known say, ”This is a dream dreamed with open eyes.” It is a dream because it has no relation to that which is. This is an intermediary state of imagination; it is merely a thought.

It makes no difference whether you saw it when asleep or when awake. The characteristic of a dream is that it is here one moment and gone the next. At the time of death all is lost. Within this dream you see another dream that is called the ego. You consider yourself the doer, the author of the dreams. You are filled with conceit, which all the world can see; only you do not see it. Everyone else is in the same state, never seeing their own, but seeing everyone else’s ego

Osho : A parable: One day the Lord Vishnu was sitting in a deep cave within a far mountain meditating with his disciple. Upon the completion of the meditation the disciple was so moved that he prostrated himself at Vishnu’s feet and begged to be able to perform some service for his Lord in gratitude. Vishnu smiled and shook his head, ”It will be most difficult for you to repay me in actions for what I have just given you freely.”

”Very well,” Vishnu relented, ”I would like a nice cool cup of water.” ”At once Lord,” the disciple said, and he ran down the mountain singing in joy.

After a while he came to a small house at the edge of a beautiful valley and knocked at the door. ”May I please have a cool cup of water for my Master,” he called. ”We are wandering sannyasins and have no home on this earth.”

A wondrous maiden answered his call, and looked at him with undisguised adoration. ”Ah,” she whispered, ”you must serve that holy saint upon the far mountain. Please, Good sir, enter my house and bestow your blessing therein.”

”Forgive my rudeness,” he answered, ”but I am in haste. I must return to my Master with his water immediately.”

”Surely, just your blessing won’t upset him. After all he is a great holy man, and as his disciple you are obligated to help those of us who are less fortunate. Please,” she repeated, ”just your blessing for my humble house. It is such an honor to have you here and to be enabled to serve the Lord through you.”

So the story goes, he relented, and entered the house and blessed all therein. And then it was time for dinner, and he was persuaded to stay and further the blessing by partaking of her food (thereby making it also holy), and since it was so late – and so far back to the mountain, and he might slip in the dark and spill the water – he was persuaded to sleep there that night and get an early start in the morning. But in the morning, the cows were in pain because there was no one to help her milk them, and if he could just help her this once (after all, cows are sacred to the Lord Krishna, and should not be in pain) it would be so wondrous.

And days became weeks, and still he remained. They were married, and had numerous children. He worked the land well and brought forth good harvests. He purchased more land and put it under cultivation, and soon his neighbors looked to him for advice and help, and he gave it freely. His family prospered. Temples were built through his effort, schools and hospitals replaced the jungle, and the valley became a jewel upon the earth. Harmony prevailed where only wilderness had been, and many flocked to the valley as news of its prosperity and peace spread throughout the land.

There was no poverty or disease there, and all men sang their praises to God as they worked. He watched his children grow and have their own children, and it was good. One day as an old man, as he stood upon a low hill facing the valley, he thought of all that had transpired since he had arrived: farms and happy prosperity as far as the eye could see. And he was pleased. Suddenly there was a great tidal wave, and as he watched, it flooded the whole valley, and in an instant all was gone. Wife, children, farms, schools, neighbors – all gone.

He stared, bewildered, at the holocaust that spread before him. And then he saw riding upon the face of the waters his Master, Vishnu, who looked at him and smiled sadly, and said, ”I’m still waiting for my water!”

This is the story of man. This is what has happened to everybody. We have completely forgotten why we are here, why we came in the first place, what to learn, what to earn, what to know, who we are and from whence and to where, what is our source and the cause of our journey into life, into body, in the world, and what we have attained up to now. And if a tidal wave comes – and it is going to come, it always comes; its name is death – all will be gone: children, family, name, fame, money, power, prestige.

All will be gone in a single moment and you will be left alone, utterly alone. All that you had done will be undone by the tidal wave. All that you had worked for will prove nothing but a dream, and your hands and your heart will be empty. And you will have to face the Lord, you will have to face existence. And the existence has been waiting for you; long, long it has been waiting for you to bring something for which you had been sent in the first place. But you have fallen asleep, and you are dreaming a thousand and one dreams. All that you have been doing up to now is nothing but a dream, because death comes and all is washed away.

oh youre sooo funny. one day soon im going to one of these satsangs cause i just have to meet someone up close and in person who has can comprehend what Osho is talking about.

you posted a vid a ways back of some big hearted blonde dude asking Osho if we should try to make the world a better place for our kids and was laughing before the poor guy even finished his question because i knew Osho was going to destroy his dream. lol

Osho : When Ashtavakra was twelve years old, Janak hosted a huge debating conference. Janak was an emperor, and he invited the pundits of the whole country to debate on the scriptures. He had one thousand cows placed at the palace gate and had the horns of the cows plated with gold and decorated with jewels. He proclaimed, ”Whoever is victorious, shall take possession of these cows.”

It was a great debate. Ashtavakra’s father also participated. As dusk was falling, the message came to Ashtavakra that his father was losing. He had already defeated all the others, but he was about to be defeated by a pundit named Vandin. Receiving this message Ashtavakra went to the palace. The hall was decorated. The debate was in its final stage and the decisive moment was fast approaching. His father’s defeat was a complete forgone conclusion – he was on the very edge of defeat.

The pundits saw Ashtavakra as he entered the royal court. They were all learned scholars. His body was bent and deformed in eight places: he had just to move and anyone would start laughing. His very movement was a laughing matter. The whole meeting broke into laughter. Ashtavakra also roared with laughter. Janak asked, ”Everyone else is laughing. I can understand why they laugh, but why did you laugh, my son?”

Ashtavakra said, ”I am laughing because truth is being decided in this conference of butchers” – the man must have been extraordinary. ”What are all these skinners doing here?”

A deep silence fell over the meeting. Butchers? Skinners? The king asked, ”What do you mean?”

Ashtavakra said, ”It is simple and straightforward: They only see skin, they don’t see me. It is difficult to find a man more pure and simple than me, but they don’t see this; they see a bent and deformed body. They are skinners, they judge by the skin. Your Majesty, in the curve of a temple is the sky curved? When a pot is smashed, is the sky smashed? The sky is beyond change. My body is twisted, but I am not. Look at the one within. You can’t find anything more straight and pure.”

It was a very startling declaration. There must have been pin-drop silence. Janak was impressed, astounded: ”Absolutely right, why had he gathered a crowd of skinners there?” He became repentant, he felt guilty that he too had laughed. That day the king couldn’t manage to say anything, but the following day when he was out on his morning ride he saw Ashtavakra on the way. Janak dismounted from his horse and fell at his feet. The day before, in front of everyone, he couldn’t find the courage.

The day before he had said, ”Why do you laugh, my son?” Ashtavakra was a boy of twelve years, and Janak had considered his age. This day he didn’t notice the age. This day he got down from his horse and fell at Ashtavakra’s feet, spread-eagled in prostration.

He said, ”Please visit the palace, and satisfy my eagerness for the truth. Oh lord, be so gracious as to come to my home. I have understood! I couldn’t sleep the whole night. You spoke truly: what depth of understanding have those who recognize only the body? They are debating the being, but attraction and repulsion for the body still arise; hate and attraction still arise. They are looking at death while talking of the deathless! I’m blessed that you came and disturbed me, that you broke my sleep. Please come to the palace!”

Janak had the palace decorated magnificently. He welcomed Ashtavakra and seated him on a golden throne – this twelve year old Ashtavakra. Then he put his questions to him. The first sutra is Janak’s inquiry. Janak asked and Ashtavakra explained. Beyond this, nothing is known about Ashtavakra. And there is no need to know more, it is more than enough! Diamonds are not many; only pebbles and rocks are so common. A single diamond is enough.

Source: “The Mahageeta, Volume 1” - Osho

heartbeatsalute

02-05-2012, 12:32 AM

oh youre sooo funny. one day soon im going to one of these satsangs cause i just have to meet someone up close and in person who has can comprehend what Osho is talking about.

you posted a vid a ways back of some big hearted blonde dude asking Osho if we should try to make the world a better place for our kids and was laughing before the poor guy even finished his question because i knew Osho was going to destroy his dream. lol

have you ever been to India?

Satsang, you will enjoy it ,nothing intellectual about it.

I don't thinks Osho is so difficult to understand. Meditating you will understand yourself, therefore understand him and everyone else.

Yes, I have been to India, stayed for a couple of months, really a nice place to be. When I went if you brought dollars, you could get a lot of things for cheap, but prices have gone up a lot now. When I WAS THERE THE PRICE OF THE DOLLAR WAS FIXED BETWEEN 43 TO 47 RUPEES.

BTW are you a curious Aquarius? LOL http://www.vander-wal.nl/shop/images/products/Coca%20Cola/Aquarius/9500_AQUARIUS%20LEMON%20BLIK%2033CC.jpg :D

.

heartbeatsalute

02-05-2012, 01:02 AM

OSHO : The Great Pilgrimage From Here to Here, Chapter 5

OSHO,
Give me some sutras to meditate on.

Devageet...Devageet is a dental doctor, but lately he is turning into a philosopher! Just today he has sent a telegram to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, saying "Drop the idea of saving the world through transcendental meditation. I have a better suggestion...." His suggestion is "transdental medication"! And I think that if the world can be saved by yogic hopping, then there seems to be no problem why it cannot be saved by transdental medication.

He is asking for some sutras to meditate on, but sutras are serious, and meditation does not need any sutra. Meditation is a state where absolute emptiness exists, not even a sutra; there is not any possibility of any object. A philosopher never meditates, a philosopher contemplates.

So I can give sutras for contemplation, but not for meditation.

Because that will be absolutely wrong.

Meditation simply means silence -- absolute, unconditional serenity of the heart, of the mind, of the being...no stirring of any kind. Even a sutra is enough of a disturbance. You can contemplate on a sutra; sutra is Sanskrit for maxim.

The first...a successful man: one who earns more than his wife can spend.

And second, a successful woman: one who finds such a man!

Third: A jealous man always finds more than he is looking for.

Fifth: Some minds are like concrete -- mixed-up and permanently set.

Sixth: The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance. The last half consists of the chance without the capacity.

Seventh: What Poona really needs is a vegetarian mosquito.

Eighth: The man who admits he is wrong is wise. The man who gives in when he is right is married!

Ninth: The rich get richer and the poor get children.

Tenth: Middle age is when it takes longer to rest than to get tired.

Eleventh: You never know how many friends you have until you rent a cottage in Poona.

Twelfth: You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step in it.

Thirteenth: Virtue is its own punishment.

Fourteenth: By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he is too old to go anywhere.

Fifteenth: Prayer must never be answered. If it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes a correspondence.

Fifteenth: An asylum for the sane would be empty in this world.
You don't get it! You belong to this world!

Sixteenth: It is always the best policy to speak the truth unless you are, of course, an exceptionally good liar.

Seventeenth: He who does not mind a big belly will hardly mind anything else.

Devageet, contemplate as much as you can, but it will not lead you anywhere.

Anything that can bring you some light, some conclusion, is not contemplation, it is meditation.

It has been an old fallacy that meditation also needs an object to meditate upon. The very word "meditation" is wrong because it gives the idea that you have to meditate upon something. Meditation simply means that you don't have anything left to meditate upon. All is empty: there is no object, no chanting, no mantra, no sutra...just pure emptiness. And suddenly all your energy of awareness turns upon yourself, without any effort on your part.

And the turning of the energy of awareness upon yourself is the ultimate experience of life, of light, of everything that is really valuable;everything that cannot be purchased but can be attained, everything that is not a commodity anybody else can give you but is something that you already have -- but you have never looked inside.

Looking inside is meditation -- just pure looking inwards, a turning of the eyes inwards one hundred and eighty degrees, and you have arrived home. Not a single step has to be taken, because you are not going anywhere; you are simply coming from here to here. You are already there where you need to be, just you are not aware. Hence, meditation can be called awareness, watchfulness, alertness, witnessing -- but it is not thinking. Contemplation is thinking; it will not lead you anywhere.

No philosopher has reached to any conclusion that solves the ultimate question of life, Who am I? But you are not to think about it...what will you think about it?

There are many people who have followed Maharishi Raman. His teaching was very simple -- he was a simple man, uneducated, not learned. He had escaped from his home when he was only seventeen. He escaped because his father died. When the whole family was weeping and crying, and the neighbors were preparing to take the dead body to the funeral pyre, nobody noticed that Raman had disappeared.

The experience of the death of his father became a tremendous revolution in Raman's mind. He was only seventeen, the only son of a poor family, and he escaped to the mountains. He remained his whole life on the mountain of Arunachal where he did nothing but just sit and watch inside. He never asked anybody anything. He had no master, he had nobody to guide him, but just sitting silently watching his own mind, he transcended his mind and he came to know himself.

And by knowing himself he came to know the ultimate bliss -- the ecstasy that surrounded Gautam Buddha, the enlightenment that was radiating from Mahavira, the joy, the dance of all those who have awakened. So whoever was asking him, "What are we supposed to do?" he had only one answer his whole life:

"Meditate on 'Who am I?'"

But people have misunderstood him...even such a simple statement. He was not saying, "Contemplate," he was not saying, "Think about 'Who am I?'" -- what can you think? Either you know or you don't know; thinking is impossible. What will you think? If you start you will think, "This is my name, this is my country, this is my family, this is my race, this is my caste, this is my profession...." But what will you find by doing this? You will not find out who you are. These things are all on the periphery.

But Raman was not a master in the sense that he could explain to people that watching the mind, the whole process of the mind, the whole traffic of thoughts.... Even "Who am I?" is a thought; don't get stuck to it. Just watch that thought too, and a moment comes when all thinking disappears -- just by watching. Just as you bring light into a dark room and darkness disappears, as you bring watchfulness to your mind, mind disappears.

And the disappearance of the mind is the beginning of knowing yourself.

This is the highest peak of consciousness, and unless a man achieves it, he has wasted his life in trivia. He lived only in name; in fact he vegetated. He may have been a very rich vegetable.... They say there are only two kinds of vegetables, cabbage and cauliflower; the cabbage category is uneducated, and the cauliflower is a cabbage with college degrees. But there is not much difference.

If you really want to live and not to vegetate, meditation is the only way; and meditation means no-mind...just silence.

OSHO,
You have spoken to us about being in the world yet not of it. How come you have not spoken to us about being in the commune yet not of it?

I have spoken about being in the world but not of it. A commune is not a community, a commune is not a world, a commune is not a society. A commune is a very friendly gathering of people who live in the world but are not of the world.

A commune is not an organization, it is simply the gathering of individuals. It does not take away anybody's individuality. It does not destroy your dignity, your pride, your self-respect. On the contrary, it gives you dignity, respect, love: it accepts you as you are. It does not demand that you should be somebody else, then only will you be thought worthy; it does not ask you to be a saint. It simply loves you as you are. That's why in the commune there is no question at all....

How can I say to you, "Be in the commune but don't belong to it"? The commune is basically individuals who have learned to be in the world and not of the world. That statement is true about the world, because the world tries to strangle you, the world tries to make you a prisoner in a thousand and one ways. The commune gives you total freedom to be yourself; there is no question of belonging to it. Each individual exists as an individual, not as a part of the commune.

In the larger world each individual is only a cog in the wheel, he does not exist as himself. He is only a number, just like in the armies. A soldier dies...on the board of the office appears the notice that "number sixteen has died."

In the army names are not recognized, but only numbers.

You will be surprised what the psychology is behind it; there is tremendous meaning. If your name is recognized, then you have a wife, you have children, you have old parents, an old father, an old mother, who must be waiting for you, who must be praying that you come back home alive. If you have a name, you are irreplaceable; but if you are just a number -- number sixteen....

Numbers don't have wives, they don't have children, they don't have parents -- nobody is waiting for them. In fact numbers can be replaced, but names cannot be, individuals cannot be. Hence for centuries armies have been changing people into numbers. So when somebody looks at the board -- how many numbers have died -- he does not feel anything about their wives, their children, their father, their mother, their friends, all their hopes, all their prayers.... It is a very cunning strategy to deceive people. And these numbers can be immediately replaced by other numbers; somebody else will become number sixteen. There is no problem in replacing numbers.

Society also, in a more subtle way, makes you just a part; it never allows you total freedom to be yourself. You are a husband, you are a wife, you are a father, you are a brother...you are never yourself, you are somebody else. There are a thousand and one expectations from you to be fulfilled; those are your chains. There are responsibilities and duties; those are your prisons.

In a commune you don't have a duty, you don't have a responsibility. You don't have to be somebody else to be worthy, to be respected, to be prestigious. Just as you are, in your utter nudeness, you are accepted, loved. Your very being is enough, nothing more is needed.

You don't ask a roseflower to be somebody else, and you don't ask a lotus to be somebody else. A marigold is as beautiful as the rose. The world would be poorer if there were no marigolds, and only roses. The world is richer because more variety is there. Each individual in a commune is unique; in the world he is just a carbon copy. In the commune, everybody is original; in the world, only a true copy.

The world expects you to follow, imitate -- everything others are doing you should do. The commune does not ask anything of you; you should simply do what is spontaneous to you, what you feel like doing. You should allow yourself absolute freedom for your potential to blossom. Hence I have not talked about the other part of your question, because that will be against the very idea of the commune.

A commune is not an alternative society.

A commune is a brotherhood of rebellious souls.

Bernie was more than a little annoyed when a neighbor telephoned at 3:00 a.m. and complained, "Your dog is barking so loudly that I can't sleep!" The neighbor hung up before he could reply.
The following morning at 3:00 a.m. Bernie called his neighbor and said, "I don't have a dog!"

This is your world -- utterly insane! That's why I say that unfortunately you have to be in it. Be, but don't belong to it; keep yourself as much unimpressed, uninfluenced by others as possible. Keep your originality; don't lose it in the crowd.

The young bride was inconsolable, in spite of the fact that her dead, seventy-five-year-old husband had left her ten million dollars in his will. Her friends tried to make her understand: "You are so young," they said. "You have a great life ahead, and ten million dollars! He had to die sooner or later."
"You don't understand," she sobbed. "He was the greatest lover. We lived next door to the church and he used to make love to me by the sound of the church bells -- ding-dong, ding-dong. And he would be alive today if it wasn't for that damn fire truck!"

That's why I say: Don't belong to this world. Be in it, but be alert that you don't get lost in the madness that is all over the earth.

Old man Finkelstein, aged eighty-five, went to a sperm bank to make a deposit. The young woman at the reception was skeptical. "Are you sure that you want to do this?" she asked.
"Yes," said old Finkelstein. "I feel it is my duty to give something from myself to the world."
The woman gave him a jar and directed him to a room down the hall. When thirty minutes had passed and he did not return, the girl began to worry that he might have had a heart attack. But just then the old man came out of the room and approached the woman.
"Listen," he said, "I tried it with one hand, then I tried it with two hands, then I got it up and hit it on the sink, then I ran warm water on it, then cold water over it, and I still can't get the lid of the jar open!"

It is better not to be part of this insane world! Remain sane.

Insanity is normal in the world -- that's why you don't detect it. Once you understand that it is the normal insanity, and you start looking deeply into it, you will be immensely surprised that you are living in a big madhouse.

The commune is a rebellion, it is not a revolution. A revolution creates an alternative society. For example, what happened in the Soviet Union was a revolution; it created an alternative society. But that society is as insane as any other society; perhaps it has different names for its insanity, but nothing has changed.

Seventy years after the revolution, people are standing in queues just to get bread -- even today. Seventy years ago they revolted against the czar to make a new world where nobody will be poor, but what actually happened is that they have created a world where nobody is rich. They have brought equality to the world, that's certainly true: they have made everybody equally poor. People in the Soviet Union, which is one sixth of the whole world, are living in a concentration camp.

I have been in America, and my sannyasins in the Soviet Union are trying for me to enter into the Soviet Union some day. Today they must have gathered to celebrate -- they have informed me that they will be gathering at the same time as we are. They have to gather in basements. They have to read books silently, "underground," so nobody can hear.

The KGB, the Intelligence Department, has caught hold of twenty sannyasins and has interrogated them continuously for weeks, harassed them just because they had my books. They have taken away all their books, and they were trying to force them to tell who the other sannyasins are. And because they were not telling, they were harassed continuously in the middle of the night; they would be called to the police station and the whole night continuous interrogation...and this is revolution!

Man has become even more a slave than he was ever before.

Man was not such a slave even in the days of the czar before the revolution; society was not so dominant and so afraid of people and their freedom.

America makes claims of democracy. I lived there for five years, and there is no democracy at all. It is one of the most hypocritical societies; it is deceiving the whole world in the name of democracy. It is another kind of dictatorship. But the whole world is like this....

I have been refused entry by twenty-one countries. Even before I had applied for a tourist visa, the German parliament decided and ordered all the borders and all the airports that if I try to enter into the country from anywhere I am not allowed...not only that I am not allowed in the country, my airplane has not to be allowed to land at any airport. What kind of world have we made?

I have not done any harm to those people. I have never been in their country. And what harm can I do if my airplane just lands for refueling in their international airport? -- and why do you call it an international airport? In what way can I affect their morality, their religion, their tradition?

I was never aware that people can be so afraid of rational thinking, of intelligent behavior. I had never thought that the whole world lives under different kinds of superstitions. They are so afraid that somebody may create an upheaval -- at least in the younger generation -- by making them aware of their superstitions.

But to live under superstitions is to live blindly. That's why I say: don't belong to this world. This is not the world for human beings, this is not the world for intelligent people; this is an ugly world created by millions of years of superstition and darkness, exploited by the religious leaders, politicians and so-called moralists. They have all proved to be parasites -- and nothing else.

A commune is not an alternative society. A commune is simply a brotherhood without any organization, without any hierarchy. Nobody is your religious leader and nobody is your political leader. Everybody is simply allowed to be his natural self, without any judgment and without any evaluation.

OSHO,
I found out that my two basic interests are sex and meditation. Am I doing right? I want to be your favorite disciple. What to do? Which is the worst question to ask you?

You have asked it! You say your interests are two: sex and meditation. If sex is your interest, forget all about meditation. When you get tired of sex, fed up with it, then the same energy that was involved in sex can be used for meditation. But you can't have both together -- that will be like riding on two horses together. Either you have sex, or you have meditation.

But one thing you have to understand: you cannot have meditation unless you have transcended sex. But transcendence should not be understood in the old ways as repression. Transcendence is experience, so much experience that you don't think anymore about attraction, infatuation. Sex simply drops like dry leaves from the trees.

It is not that you have to make some effort. If you have to make some effort to drop it, it will remain with you. And if it is there, meditation is impossible; it won't let you be silent. It is one of the most torturous biological slaveries. It is good to get rid of it by experiencing it with totality and intensity -- don't think of meditation at all. Sex, lived totally, will bring you to meditation; and then meditation will be very easy, because there will be no biological pull against it. Your so-called priests, monks, saints, cannot meditate.

Even a man like Mahatma Gandhi, at the age of seventy, was having sexual dreams.

This was the result of a whole life of repression. And finally at the age of seventy-five he started to sleep with young naked girls.

His disciples, who had become the rulers of the country -- he was the greatest spiritual and political leader, both -- tried to hide this fact; the masses of the country should not know about it. They protected him in every way. The news should not become common; people should not come to know about it. There was a danger that he might lose all his saintliness. People have respected him, followed him...and before his death, he will see himself fallen, failed.

They tried to persuade him to stop this, but he had his explanations and excuses. He used to tell them, "This is an experiment to check on my celibacy -- whether I am really celibate or not."

Mind is very cunning. Nobody in the world has ever checked celibacy this way before. If you are celibate, I don't think you will not know whether you are or not, whether the idea of the other sex comes to your mind or not. You don't need any test. You yourself will be enough to know whether your mind is visited by sexual ideas, dreams, fantasies, or not.

But the reality was he was tortured...and the reason was not that he was insincere; he was a very sincere man, but he followed a wrong path sincerely. Always remember: just sincerity is not going to help. You can be very honest, very sincere, very arduous...but if you are on a wrong path all your sincerity will lead you not to the goal you wanted to reach, but exactly to its opposite.

Gandhi could never understand what meditation is, and that was one of his greatest failures. He could not understand that you can be free from any desire only if you have lived it completely, entirely.

If something has remained unlived it is going to haunt you.

You are saying sex and meditation are your two basic interests. Please have one basic interest! And sex is absolutely first, because that is your biological bondage. You have to get free of it, and the way to get free of it is not to fight with it -- that's what religious people have been doing for centuries. They have not succeeded.

Not a single person has succeeded in transcending sex by fighting it, by repressing it. Live it! -- and don't live it with guilt, don't live it as if it is something wrong, it is a sin. It is not. It is neither a sin nor a crime, it is an absolutely natural way of reproducing. You are not responsible for it.

You are produced through sex. Your every cell is sexual. Nature has found a way to go on reproducing life in new forms; sex is simply a methodology which nature has chosen. You cannot fight with nature. Nature is vast and tremendously strong, but you can get beyond it, and the way beyond is through it -- not by fighting, but by understanding, experiencing.... And the more you become experienced, capable of understanding, it is absolutely easy to move your energy into the second stage of evolution: from sex to meditation.

Meditation is very simple if sex has been lived completely without any fear, any repression, any guilt. My own understanding is that by the time...just as at the age of fourteen you become interested in sex, if you live perfectly and totally and sincerely -- religiously -- your sexual life, by the age of forty-two you will be out of it.

Life has seven year cycles. If you take as an average seventy years, it has ten cycles of seven years. The first seven years you are absolutely innocent -- you are just as a saint should be. Your second seven years are a preparation for sex; slowly, slowly, the snake of sex starts uncoiling within you. By the age of fourteen you are mature and you can reproduce children. From fourteen to twenty-one your sexual energy is at its highest peak, exactly between fourteen and twenty-one: that means seventeen and a half is the climax of sexual energy.

But this society has lived with such repressive and unnatural, unscientific ideas that these are the years when you are told to be celibate. And these are the years when you could have lived sex, and celibacy would have come by itself by the time you are forty-two.

Between twenty-one and twenty-eight, sex is very normal, very natural. From twenty-eight to thirty-five, sex starts declining. From thirty-five to forty-two, sex reaches its ultimate decline. From forty-two to forty-nine, sex disappears. That's why in ancient India the wise people decided that by the time one is fifty-one should start preparing for vanprashtha. His face should be now towards the mountains, towards the forest -- that is the meaning of vanprashtha. He is still in the world, but now his whole consciousness has turned and he is getting ready to move into the deep forest to be alone. The days of meditation have come.

By the time a person is fifty his children will be nearabout twenty-five. They must be getting married, they must be getting into a profession. The father can look forward to twenty-five years more...these are the twenty-five years, from fifty to seventy-five, that he can watch -- he can live in the world yet not be of the world. He can watch his children slowly taking over. And after seventy-five all his interest in the world will have disappeared; then meditation will be his only interest.

But this is just a formal categorization. It depends on you and your intensity of living. You can be beyond sex by the time you are thirty-five. You can be beyond sex without much difficulty when you are forty-two.

But it is unfortunate that people die still as foolish as young people.

Psychologists have come to the conclusion that most people die with the idea of sex...that is their last idea. They may be repeating the name of God, but inside they are thinking, If only it was possible one time more...! They have not lived their life wholeheartedly. That's why something that should have ended at forty-two has continued up to eighty, up to ninety.

Live your first interest and be finished with it. But be finished with it by living it, joyously! There is nothing wrong, there is no sin. Then meditation will become absolutely simple and easy, because your mind will not be burdened with sexual infatuation and desires. That is your only bondage. All other bondages are secondary, all other bondages are branches of your sexuality.

For what do you want money? For what do you want power? Have you watched that all other interests are centered on sex? A man without money will not be able to get the most beautiful woman; a man without power will not be able to get the most beautiful woman. All your so-called desires are centered on a single fact, a single interest, and that is sex. Just live it, and live it joyously without any fear of hell or heaven. There is no hell, no heaven.

Once you are out of sex, once it has disappeared like smoke disappearing into the sky and you cannot see it, then meditation is so easy. You don't have to make any effort, you have just to sit silently with your eyes closed, relaxed, and you will find meditation is there.

Sex and meditation...? You will not be able to live sex fully, and that will go on lingering with you. And you will not be able to meditate because sex will continuously interfere.

You know the stories of the old seers, that even at their height, in their old age, after a long, long preparation of austerities, fasting, chanting, studying holy scriptures -- doing everything -- when they come to the point of realization, the stories say that suddenly apsaras from heaven....

Apsaras are nothing but heavenly prostitutes, specially provided for the saints.

They are sent down to disturb these poor fellows' meditation.

This is strange, why should anybody be bothered about these poor fellows who have been torturing themselves in every possible way -- starving, fighting with their body, repressing their sex? There is nobody who is sending these apsaras, and these apsaras are nowhere. It is just their own repressed sexuality that starts coming up in fantasies, in hallucinations.

And it is so simple...if you want to experiment with what hallucination is, just go to a mountain cave alone, fast three weeks, and don't meet anyone. By the end of the second week you will start talking to yourself -- and not only will you talk, you will answer also! By the third week you will start seeing people...if you are a man you will see women; if you are a woman you will see men. By the fourth week you will not be able to make a distinction at all whether the woman that you see sitting in front of you in the cave is real or an hallucination...!

Just four weeks' experiment and you will know how apsaras have come. They will come to you too; they have not stopped the process of coming. But it is simply the hallucination of your repressed desire, so deeply repressed that it takes revenge -- with a vengeance.

My suggestion to you is, first sex, because it is more basic to your body, to your life; it is the foundation of life. Meditation is the highest peak, but sex is the roots. First think of the roots.

Meditation is the flowers. They come at the very end, at the very top of the tree; they will come. But don't try both together, otherwise you will remain wishy-washy, always halfhearted...meditating and thinking about sex, making love and thinking about Gautam Buddha! This will simply drive you crazy.

And you are asking, "I want to be your favorite disciple."

I feel scared! Please just remain a disciple!

I don't have any favorite disciples.

Because to have favorite disciples means people who will betray you, people who will become Judases, people who will assassinate you. People who are first trying to be favorite disciples soon would like you to move over, give place to them; now they want to be masters. I don't want any favorite disciples. This is simple politics. Just keep to the space where you are. I am feeling perfectly at ease; when you come too close...I am allergic!

And you are saying, "What to do? Which is the worst question to ask you?" You cannot ask it. What worse question can you ask? You have asked it. But I can answer you, as bad as you like! Just I am looking for a worse...! So just be patient! It is really the worst, so just be quiet.

An English lady was on holiday in the wild west. One day she decided to visit an Indian reservation and became interested in the number of feathers in the men's headdresses. So she asked one brave, and he replied, "Me only have one feather because me only have one squaw."

Thinking this was a joke, she asked another brave. "Me only have four feathers because me only have four squaws," he replied.
Somewhat perturbed, the English lady decided to ask the chief, who had a magnificent headdress full of feathers. "Me Chief," he replied, "so me fuck them all! Big, small, short, tall...me fuck them all!"

The lady was horrified. "You ought to be hung!" she cried.
"You damned right," said the Chief, "me hung like a buffalo!"
The English lady cried, "You don't have to be so hostile!"
"Hoss-style, dog-style, any style...me fuck them all!"
With tears in her eyes, the lady cried, "Oh, dear...."
"No deer," said the Chief, "Deer run too fast and asshole too high!"

Sixth, I saw Hermann Hesse. He was not an enlightened one, what to say about those who have
gone beyond enlightenment. He was just an ordinary human being, but in a poetic flight he has
written one of the greatest books in the world, SIDDHARTHA.

Siddhartha is really the name of Gautama the Buddha, given to him by his parents. He became
known as Gautam Buddha. Gautama was his family name; Buddha simply means ’the awakened’.

Siddhartha was the real name given by his parents in consultation with the astrologers. It is a
beautiful name. Siddhartha also means ’one who has attained to the meaning’. Siddha means ’one
who has attained’; artha means ’the meaning’. Combined together Siddhartha means ’one who has
come to the meaning of life’. The astrologers, the parents, the people who gave him this name must
have been wise people – if not enlightened, at least wise... worldly-wise at least.

Hermann Hesse’s SIDDHARTHA repeats the story of Buddha in a different way, but in the same
dimension, with the same meaning. It is unbelievable that Hermann Hesse could write it but could
not become a siddha himself. He remained a poor writer – yes, a Nobel prizewinner, but that does
not matter that much. You cannot give a Nobel prize to a buddha; he will laugh and throw it away.

Question - Osho, I was brought up in the teachings of Rudolph Steiner, but I could not yet break through my barriers towards him. Although I believe him to be right in the way he shows that for the west, the possibility to free ourselves from 'Maya' is to learn to think in the right way. By doing this and by meditating, he says we are able to lose our egos and find our 'i'. The central figure for him is Christ, whom he differentiates from Jesus as a totally different being. Your way seems different to me. Can you please advise me? I am somehow torn between you and the way Steiner shows.

Osho - RUDOLPH STEINER WAS A GREAT MIND, but mind you, I say 'a great mind', and mind as such has nothing to do with religion. He was tremendously talented. In fact, it is very rare to find another mind to compare with Rudolph Steiner. He was so talented in so many directions and dimensions; it looks almost super-human: a great logical thinker, a great philosopher, a great architect, a great educator, and so on and so forth. And whatsoever he touched, he brought very novel ideas to that subject. Wherever he moved his eyes, he created new patterns of thought. He was a great man, a great mind, but mind as such, small or great, has nothing to do with religion.

Religion comes out of no-mind. Religion is not a talent, it is your nature. If you want to be a great painter, you have to be talented; if you want to be a great poet, you have to be talented; if you want to be a scientist, of course, you have to be talented; but if you want to be religious, no special talent is needed. Anybody, small or great, who is willing to drop his mind, enters into the dimension of the divine. And of course, great talented men find it very difficult to drop their minds; their investment is bigger. For an ordinary man who has no talent, it is very easy to drop the mind. Even then it seems so difficult. He has nothing to lose; still he goes on clinging. Of course, the difficulty is multiplied when you have a talented mind, when you are a genius. Then your whole ego is invested in your mind. You cannot drop it.

Rudolph Steiner founded a new movement called anthroposophy, against theosophy. He was a theosophist in the beginning, then his ego started fighting other egos in the movement. He wanted to become the very head, the supreme-most of the theosophical movement in the world, the world head. That was not possible; there were many other egos. And the greatest problem was coming from J. Krishnamurti, who is not an ego at all. And of course, theosophists were thinking more and more towards Krishnamurti. He was becoming, by and by, the messiah. That created trouble in Rudolph Steiner's mind. He broke off from the movement. The whole German section of theosophy broke with him. He was really a very, very convincing orator, a convincing writer; he convinced people. He destroyed theosophy very badly, he divided it. And since then theosophy could never become whole and healthy.

Rudolph Steiner has an appeal for the Western mind, and that is the danger -- because the Western mind is basically logic-oriented: reason, thinking, logos. He talks about it, and he says, "This is the way for the Western mind." No, Eastern or Western, mind is mind; and the way is no-mind. If you are Eastern, you will have to drop the Eastern mind. If you are Western, you will have to drop the Western mind. To move into meditation, mind, as such, has to be dropped. If you are a Christian you will have to drop a Christian mind. If you are a Hindu, you will have to drop the Hindu mind. Meditation is not concerned with Christian, Hindu, Eastern, Western, Indian or German, no.

What is mind? Mind is a conditioning given to you by the society. It is an over-imposition on the original mind, which we call no-mind. Just so that you don't get confused, all mind, as such, has to be dropped. The passage has to be completely empty for the divine to enter into you. Thinking is not meditation. Even right thinking is not meditation. Wrong or right, thinking has to be dropped. When there is no thought in you, no clouds of thinking in you, the ego disappears. And remember, when the ego disappears the 'I' is not found. The questioner says that Rudolf Steiner says, "When the ego disappears, the 'I' is found." No, when the ego disappears I is not found. Nothing is found. Yes, exactly; nothing... is found.

Just the other night I was telling a story of a great Zen master, To-san. He became empty, he became enlightened, he became a non-being; what Buddhists call anatta, no-mind. The rumor reached to the gods that somebody had again become enlightened. And of course, when somebody becomes enlightened, gods want to see his face -- the beauty of it, the beauty of the original, the virginity of it. Gods came down to the monastery To-san lived in.

They looked and looked, and they tried, and they would enter into him from one side, and get out from another side, and nobody was found inside To-san. They were very frustrated. They wanted to see the face, the original face, and there was nobody. They tried many devices, and then one very cunning god, clever, said, "Do one thing": he ran into the kitchen of the monastery, brought handfuls of rice and wheat. To-san was coming from his morning walk and he threw it on his path.

In a Zen monastery, everything has to be respected absolutely; even rice and wheat, stones, everything has to be respected. One has to be continuously careful and aware. Not even a grain of rice can you find in a Zen monastery Lying here and there. You have to be respectful. And remember, that respect has nothing to do with Gandhian economics. It is not a question of economy, because Gandhian economy is nothing but rationalized miserliness. It has nothing to do with miserliness. It is a simple respect for everything, absolute respect.

This was disrespectful. This is the original idea of the Upanishads where seers have said, "ANAMBRAHMA" -- food is God -- because food gives you life, food is your energy. God comes into your body through food, becomes your blood, your bones, so a god should be treated as a god. When those gods threw rice and wheat on the path where To-san came, he could not believe: "Who has done this? Who has been so careless?" A thought arose in his mind, and the story is that gods could see his face for a single moment, because for a single moment the 'I' arose in a very subtle way: "Who has done this? Something has gone wrong."

And whenever you decide what is wrong and what is right, you are there, immediately. Between the right and the wrong exists the ego. Between one thought and another thought exists the ego. Each thought brings its own ego. For a moment, a cloud arose in To-san's consciousness -- "Who has done this?" -- a tension. Each thought is a tension. Even very ordinary, very innocent-looking thoughts are tensions.

You see the garden is beautiful, and the sun is rising, and the birds are singing, and an idea arises, "How beautiful!" Even that, that is a tension. That's why if somebody is walking by your side, you will immediately say to him, "Look, what a beautiful morning!" What are you doing? You are simply releasing the tension that has come through the thought. Beautiful morning... a thought has come; it has created a tension around it. Your being is no more non-tense.

It has to be released, so you speak to the other. It is meaningless because he is also standing just where you are standing. He is also listening to the birds, he is also seeing the sun rise, he is also looking at the flowers, so what is the point of saying something like "this is beautiful"? Is he blind? But that is not the point. You are not communicating any message to him. The message is as clear to him as to you. In fact, you are relieving yourself of a tension. By saying it, the thought is dispersed into the atmosphere; you are relieved of the burden.

A thought arose in To-san's mind, a cloud gathered, and through that cloud the gods were able to see his face, just a glimpse. Again the cloud disappeared, again there was no longer any To-san.

Remember, this is what meditation is all about. to destroy you so utterly that even if gods come they cannot seek you, they cannot find you. You yourself have found when such a situation arises, that not even gods can find you. There is nobody inside to be found. That 'somebodiness' is a sort of tension. That's why people who think they are somebodies are more tense. People who think that they are nobodies are less tense. People who have completely forgotten that they are, are tensionless. So remember, when the ego is lost, the 'I' is not found. When the ego is lost nothing is found. That nothingness, that purity of nothingness is your being, your innermost core, your very nature, your Buddha-nature, your awareness -- like a vast sky with no clouds gathered in it.

Now, listen to the question again. "I was brought up in the teachings of Rudolph Steiner." Yes, they are teachings, and what I am doing here is not teaching you anything. Rather, on the contrary, I am taking all teachings away from you. I am not a teacher. I am not imparting knowledge to you. My whole effort is to destroy all that you think you know. My whole effort is to take all knowledge from you. I'm here to help you to unlearn.

"I was brought up in the teachings of Rudolph Steiner, but I could not yet break through my barriers towards him."
Nobody is able to break his barriers towards a person who is himself ego-oriented. It is difficult to break your barriers towards a person who is no more. Even then, it is so difficult to break your barriers because your ego resists. But when you are around a teacher who has his own ego-trip still alive, who is still, who is still trying to be somebody, who is still tense, it is impossible to drop down your ego.

"Although I believe him to be right in the way he shows that for the West, the possibility to free ourselves from maya is to learn to think in the right way."

No, the way for the East or for the West is: how to unlearn thinking, how not to think, and just be. And it is needed more for the West than for the East, because in the West the whole two millennia since Aristotle have been of conditioning you for thinking, thinking, thinking. Thinking has been the goal. The thinking mind has been the goal in the West: how to become more and more accurate, scientific in your thinking. The whole scientific world arose out of this effort, because when you are working as a scientist you have to think. You have to work out in the objective world, and you have to find more accurate, exact, valid ways of thinking. And it has paid off too much. Science has been a great success, so of course people think that the same methodology will be helpful when you go inwards. That is the fallacy of Rudolph Steiner.

He thinks that in the same way as we have been able to penetrate into matter, the same method will help to go in. It cannot help, because to go in one has to move in just the opposite direction, diametrically opposite. If thinking helps to know matter, nothinking will help to know yourself. If logic helps to know matter, something like a Zen koan, something absurd, illogical, will help you to go in: faith, trust, love, maybe; but logic, never. Whatsoever has helped you to know the world better is going to be a barrier inside. And the same is true about the outer world also: whatsoever helps you to know yourself will not necessarily help you to know matter. That's why the East could not develop science. The first glimpses of science had come to the East, but the East could not develop it. The East did not move in that direction. The basic rudimentary knowledge was developed in the East.

For example: mathematical symbols, figures from one to ten, were developed in India. That made mathematics possible. It was a great discovery, but there it stopped. The beginning happened, but the East could not go very far in that direction. Because of that, in all the languages of the world, the numerals, mathematical numerals, carry Sanskrit roots. For example: two is Sanskrit dwa -- it became twa, and then two. Three is Sanskrit tri -- it became three. Six is Sanskrit sasth -- it became six. Seven is Sanskrit sapt -- it became seven. Eight is Sanskrit ast -- it became eight. Nine is Sanskrit nawa -- it became nine. The basic discovery is Indian, but then it stopped there.

In China they developed ammunition for the first time, almost five thousand years back, but they never made any bombs out of it. They made only fireworks. They enjoyed, they loved it, they played with it, but it was a toy. They never killed anybody through it. They never went too far into it.

The East has discovered many basic things, but has not gone deep into it. It cannot go, because the whole effort is to go within. Science is a Western effort; religion is an Eastern effort. In the West even religion tries to be scientific. That was what Rudolph Steiner was doing: trying to make the religious approach more and more scientific -- because in the West, science is valuable. If you can prove that religion is also scientific, then religion also becomes valuable in a vicarious way, indirectly. So in the West, every religious person goes on trying to prove that science is not the only science, religion is also a science. In the East we have not bothered. It is just the other way round: if there was some scientific discovery, the people who had discovered it had to prove that it had some religious significance. Otherwise, it was meaningless.

"By doing this and by meditating, he says we are able to lose our ego and find our 'I'."
Rudolph Steiner does not know what meditation is, and what he calls meditation is concentration. He's completely confused: he calls concentration meditation. Concentration is not meditation. Concentration is again a very, very useful means for scientific thinking. It is to concentrate the mind, narrow the mind, focus the mind on a certain thing. But the mind remains, becomes more focused, becomes more integrated.

Meditation is not concentrating on anything. In fact, it is a relaxing, not narrowing. In concentration there is an object. In meditation there is no object at all. You are simply lost in an objectless consciousness, a diffusion of consciousness. Concentration is exclusive to something, and everything else is excluded from it. It includes only one thing; it excludes everything else.

For example: if you are listening to me you can listen in two ways: you can listen through concentration; then you are tense, and you are focused on what I am saying. Then the birds will be singing, but you will not listen to them. You will think that is a distraction. Distraction arises out of your-effort to concentrate. Distraction is a by-product of concentration. You can listen to me in a meditative way; then you are simply open, available -- you listen tome, and you listen to the birds also, and the wind passes through the trees and creates a sound; you listen to that also -- then you are simultaneously here. Then whatsoever is happening here, you are available to it without any mind of your own, without any choice of your own.

You don't say, "I will listen to this and I will not listen. to that." No, you listen to the whole existence. Then birds and me and the wind are not three separate things. They are not. They are happening simultaneously, together, all together, and you listen to the whole. Of course, then your understanding will be tremendously enriched because the birds are also saying the same thing in their way, and the wind is also carrying the same message in its way, and I am also saying the same thing in a linguistic way, so that you can understand it more. Otherwise, the message is the same. Mediums differ, but the message is the same, because God is the message.

When a cuckoo goes crazy, it is God going crazy. Don't exclude, don't exclude him; you will be excluding God. Don't exclude anything; be inclusive. Concentration is a narrowing of consciousness; meditation is expansion: all doors are open, all windows are open, and you are not choosing. Then of course, when you don't choose you cannot be distracted. This is the beauty of meditation: a meditator cannot be distracted. And let that be the criterion: if you are distracted, know that you are doing concentration, not meditation. A dog starts barking -- a meditator is not distracted. He absorbs that too, he enjoys that too.

So he says, "Look... so God is barking in the dog. Perfectly good. Thank you for barking while I'm meditating. So you take care of me in so many ways," but no tension arises. He does not say, "This dog is antagonistic. He is trying to destroy my concentration. I am such a religious, serious man, and this foolish dog... what is he doing here?" Then enmity arises, anger arises. And you think this is meditation? -- no, this is not of worth if you become angry at the dog, poor dog who is doing his own thing. He is not destroying your meditation or concentration or anything. He is not worried about your religion at all, nor about you. He may not even be aware of what nonsense you are doing. He's simply enjoying his way, his life. No, he is not your enemy.

Watch... if one person becomes religious in a house, the whole house becomes disturbed because that person is continuously on the verge of being distracted. He's praying; nobody should make any sound. He's meditating; children should remain silent, nobody should play. You are imposing unnecessary conditions on existence. And then if you are distracted and you feel disturbed, only you are responsible. Only you are to be blamed, nobody else.

What Rudolph Steiner calls meditation is nothing but concentration. And through concentration you can lose the ego and you will gain the 'I', and the 'I' will be nothing but a very, very subtle ego. You will become a pious egoist. Your ego will now be decorated in religious language, but it will be there.

"The central figure for him is Christ, whom he differentiates from Jesus as a totally different being." Now, for a meditator there cannot be any central figure. There need not be. But for one who concentrates, something is needed to concentrate upon. Rudolph Steiner says Christ is the central figure. Why not Buddha? Why not Patanjali? Why not Mahavir? Why Christ? For Buddhists, Buddha is the central figure, not Christ. They all need some object to concentrate upon, something on which to focus their minds. For a religious man there is no central figure. If your own central ego has disappeared, or is disappearing, you need not have any other ego outside to support it. That Christ or Buddha is again an ego somewhere. You are creating a polarity of I-thou. You say, "Christ, thou art my master," but who will say this? An 'I' is needed to assert. Look, listen to Zen Buddhists. They say, "If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately." If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately, otherwise he will kill you. Don't allow him a single chance, otherwise he will possess you and he will become a central figure. Your mind will arise around him again. You will become a Buddhist mind. You will become a Christian mind. For a certain mind, a certain central object is needed.

And of course, he is more in favor of Christ than Jesus. That too has to be understood. That's how the pious ego arises. Jesus is just like us: a human being with a body, with ordinary life; very human. Now, for a very great egoist this won't do. He needs a very, very purified figure. Christ is nothing but Jesus purified. It is just like if you make curd out of your milk, then take cream out of it, and then you make ghee out of the cream. Then ghee is the purest part, the most essential. Now you cannot make anything out of ghee. Ghee is the last refinement, the white petrol. From kerosene, petrol; from petrol, white petrol. Now, no more; it is finished. Christ is just the purified Jesus. It is difficult for Rudolph Steiner to accept Jesus, and it is difficult for all egoists. They try to reject in many ways.

For example: Christians say that he was born out of a virgin. The basic problem is that Christians cannot accept that he was born just like we ordinary human beings. Then he will also look ordinary. He has to be special, and we have to be followers of a special Master. Not like Buddha, born out of ordinary human love, ordinary human sexual copulation, no -- Jesus is special. Special people need a special Master, out of a virgin. And he's the only begotten Son of God, the only. Because if there are other sons, then he is no longer special. He is the only Christ, the only one who has been crowned by God. All others, at the most, can be messengers, but cannot be of the same level and plane as Christ. Christians have done it in their own way, but I would like you to understand Jesus more than Christ -- because Jesus will be more blissful to understand, peaceful to understand, and will be of great help on the path. Because you are in the situation of being a Jesus; Christ is just a dream.

First you have to pass through being a Jesus, and only then someday will Christ arise within you. Christ is just a state of being, just as Buddha is a state of being. Gautama became Buddha; Jesus became Christ. You can also become Christ, but right now Christ is too far. You can think about it and create philosophies and theologies about it, but that is not going to help. Right now it is better to understand Jesus, because that is where you are. That is from where the journey has to start. Love Jesus, because through loving Jesus you will love your humanity. Try to understand Jesus, and the paradox, and through that paradox you will be able to feel less guilty. Through understanding Jesus you will be able to love yourself more.

Now, Christians go on trying somehow to drop the paradox of Jesus through bringing the concept of Christ. For example: there are moments when Jesus is angry, and it is a problem; what to do? It is very difficult to avoid the fact because many times he is angry, and that goes against his very teaching. He continually talks about love, and is angry. And he talks about forgiving your enemies -- not only that, but loving your enemies -- but he himself lashes out his anger. In the temple of Jerusalem he took a whip, started beating the money changers, and threw them out of the temple singlehanded. He must have been in a real fury, in a rage, almost mad.

Now this... how to reconcile this? The way that Christians have found to reconcile -- and Rudolph Steiner bases his own ideology on it -- is to create a Christ, which is completely reconciled. Forget all about Jesus; bring a pure concept of Christ. You can say in that moment, "He was Jesus when he was angry." And when he said on the cross, "God my Father, forgive these people, because they don't know what they are doing," he was Christ. Now the paradox can be managed. When he was moving with women he was Jesus; when he told Magdalene not to touch him he was Christ. Two concepts help to figure things out -- but you destroy the beauty of Jesus, because the whole beauty is in paradox.

There is no need to reconcile, because deep in Jesus' being they are reconciled. In fact, he could become angry because he loved so much. He loved so tremendously, that's why he could become angry. His anger was not part of hatred, it was part of his love. Have you not sometimes known anger out of love? Then where is the problem? You love your child: sometimes you spank the child, you beat the child, sometimes you are almost in a fury, but it is because of love. It is not because you hate. He loved so much -- that's my understanding of Jesus -- he loved so much that he forgot all about anger and he became angry. His love was so much. He was not just a dead saint, he was an alive person; and his love was not just philosophy, it was a reality. When love is a reality, sometimes love becomes anger also.

He was as human as you are. Yes, he was not finished there. He was more than human also, but first and basically he was human, human plus. Christians have been trying to prove that he was super-human and the humanity was just accidental, a necessary evil because he had to come into a body. That's why he was angry. Otherwise, he was just purity. That purity will be dead.

If purity is real and authentic, it is not afraid of impurity. If love is true it is not afraid of anger; if love is true it is not afraid of fighting. It shows that even fight will not destroy it; it will survive. There are saints who talk about loving humanity, but cannot love a single human being. It is very easy to love humanity. Always remember: if you cannot love, you love humanity. It is very easy, because you can never come across humanity, and humanity is not going to create any trouble. A single human being will create many troubles, many more. And you can feel very, very good that you love humanity. How can you love human beings? -- you love humanity. You are vast, your love is great. But I will tell you: love a human being; that is the basic preparation for loving humanity. It is going to be difficult, and it is going to be a great crisis, a continuous crisis and challenge. If you can transcend it, and you don't destroy love because of the difficulties but you go on strengthening your love so that it can face all difficulties -- possible, impossible -- you will become integrated. Christ loved human beings, and loved so much, and his love was so great that it transcended human beings and became the love for humanity. Then it transcended humanity and became love for existence. That is love for God.

"Your way seems different to me."
Not only different; it is diametrically opposite. In the first place, it is not a way at all. It is not a path, or if you love the word then call it a pathless path, a gateless gate. But it is not a path, because a path or way is needed if your reality is far away from you. Then it has to be joined by a path. But my whole insistence is that your reality is available to you right now. It is just within you. A path is not needed to reach to it. In fact, if you drop all paths, you will suddenly find yourself standing in it. The more you follow paths, the farther away you go from yourself. Paths misguide, mislead, because you are already that which you are seeking. So paths are not needed, but if you are trained to think in those terms, then I will say that my way is diametrically opposite. Steiner says right-thinking; and I say, right or wrong, all thinking is wrong. Thinking as such is wrong; no-thinking is right.

"Can you please advise me? because I am somehow torn between you and the way Steiner shows."

No, you will have to remain in that state of tension for a few days. I will not advise and I will not help. Because if I advise and I help you, you can come and lean towards me; that may be immature. You will have to have a good fight with Steiner before you can come to me, and he will certainly give you a good fight. He is not going to leave you so easily. And I'm not going to give you any help, so that you come on your own. Only then do you come, when you come on your own. When a fruit is ripe it falls on its own accord. No, I will not throw even a small stone at it, because the fruit may not be ripe and the stone may bring it down... and that will be a calamity. You would remain in your torn state of mind.

You will have to decide, because nobody can remain in a torn state of mind for long. There is a point where one has to decide. And it will not be just towards Rudolph Steiner if I help you. He's dead; he cannot fight with me. It is easier for me to pull you towards me than it will be for him. So to also be just to him it is better that I leave it to you. You just go on fighting. Either you will drop me... that will also be a gain, because then you will follow Rudolph Steiner more totally. But I don't think that is possible now... the poison has entered you. Now it is only a question of time.

Source: from Osho Book "Yoga Vol 10"

heartbeatsalute

02-05-2012, 08:24 AM

http://the7thfire.com/images/bhagwan.jpg

OSHO TALK ABOUT HIS ENLIGHTENMENT

I am reminded of the fateful day of twenty-first March, 1953.

For many lives I had been working -- working upon myself, struggling, doing whatsoever can be done -- and nothing was happening.

Now I understand why nothing was happening. The very effort was the barrier, the very ladder was preventing, the very urge to seek was the obstacle. Not that one can reach without seeking. Seeking is needed, but then comes a point when seeking has to be dropped. The boat is needed to cross the river but then comes a moment when you have to get out of the boat and forget all about it and leave it behind. Effort is needed, without effort nothing is possible. And also only with effort, nothing is possible.

Just before twenty-first March, 1953, seven days before, I stopped working on myself. A moment comes when you see the whole futility of effort. You have done all that you can do and nothing is happening. You have done all that is humanly possible. Then what else can you do? In sheer helplessness one drops all search.

And the day the search stopped, the day I was not seeking for something, the day I was not expecting something to happen, it started happening. A new energy arose -- out of nowhere. It was not coming from any source. It was coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was in the trees and in the rocks and the sky and the sun and the air -- it was everywhere. And I was seeking so hard, and I was thinking it is very far away. And it was so near and so close.

Just because I was seeking I had become incapable of seeing the near. Seeking is always for the far, seeking is always for the distant -- and it was not distant. I had become far-sighted, I had lost the near-sightedness. The eyes had become focussed on the far away, the horizon, and they had lost the quality to see that which is just close, surrounding you.

The day effort ceased, I also ceased. Because you cannot exist without effort, and you cannot exist without desire, and you cannot exist without striving.

The phenomenon of the ego, of the self, is not a thing, it is a process. It is not a substance sitting there inside you; you have to create it each moment. It is like pedalling bicycle. If you pedal it goes on and on, if you don't pedal it stops. It may go a little because of the past momentum, but the moment you stop pedalling, in fact the bicycle starts stopping. It has no more energy, no more power to go anywhere. It is going to fall and collapse.

The ego exists because we go on pedalling desire, because we go on striving to get something, because we go on jumping ahead of ourselves. That is the very phenomenon of the ego -- the jump ahead of yourself, the jump in the future, the jump in the tomorrow. The jump in the non-existential creates the ego. Because it comes out of the non-existential it is like a mirage. It consists only of desire and nothing else. It consists only of thirst and nothing else.

The ego is not in the present, it is in the future. If you are in the future, then ego seems to be very substantial. If you are in the present the ego is a mirage, it starts disappearing.

The day I stopped seeking... and it is not right to say that I stopped seeking, better will be to say the day seeking stopped. Let me repeat it: the better way to say it is the day the seeking stopped. Because if I stop it then I am there again. Now stopping becomes my effort, now stopping becomes my desire, and desire goes on existing in a very subtle way.

You cannot stop desire; you can only understand it. In the very understanding is the stopping of it. Remember, nobody can stop desiring, and the reality happens only when desire stops.

So this is the dilemma. What to do? Desire is there and Buddhas go on saying desire has to be stopped, and they go on saying in the next breath that you cannot stop desire. So what to do? You put people in a dilemma. They are in desire, certainly. You say it has to be stopped -- okay. And then you say it cannot be stopped. Then what is to be done?

The desire has to be understood. You can understand it, you can just see the futility of it. A direct perception is needed, an immediate penetration is needed. Look into desire, just see what it is, and you will see the falsity of it, and you will see it is non-existential. And desire drops and something drops simultaneously within you.

Desire and the ego exist in cooperation, they coordinate. The ego cannot exist without desire, the desire cannot exist without the ego. Desire is projected ego, ego is introjected desire. They are together, two aspects of one phenomenon.

The day desiring stopped, I felt very hopeless and helpless. No hope because no future. Nothing to hope because all hoping has proved futile, it leads nowhere. You go in rounds. It goes on dangling in front of you, it goes on creating new mirages, it goes on calling you, 'Come on, run fast, you will reach.' But howsoever fast you run you never reach.

That's why Buddha calls it a mirage. It is like the horizon that you see around the earth. It appears but it is not there. If you go it goes on running from you. The faster you run, the faster it moves away. The slower you go, the slower it moves away. But one thing is certain -- the distance between you and the horizon remains absolutely the same. Not even a single inch can you reduce the distance between you and the horizon.

You cannot reduce the distance between you and your hope. Hope is horizon. You try to bridge yourself with the horizon, with the hope, with a projected desire. The desire is a bridge, a dream bridge -- because the horizon exists not, so you cannot make a bridge towards it, you can only dream about the bridge. You cannot be joined with the non-existential.

The day the desire stopped, the day I looked and realized into it, it simply was futile. I was helpless and hopeless. But that very moment something started happening. The same started happening for which for many lives I was working and it was not happening. In your hopelessness is the only hope, and in your desirelessness is your only fulfillment, and in your tremendous helplessness suddenly the whole existence starts helping you.

It is waiting. When it sees that you are working on your own, it does not interfere. It waits. It can wait infinitely because there is no hurry for it. It is eternity. The moment you are not on your own, the moment you drop, the moment you disappear, the whole existence rushes towards you, enters you. And for the first time things start happening.

Seven days I lived in a very hopeless and helpless state, but at the same time something was arising. When I say hopeless I don't mean what you mean by the word hopeless. I simply mean there was no hope in me. Hope was absent. I am not saying that I was hopeless and sad. I was happy in fact, I was very tranquil, calm and collected and centered. Hopeless, but in a totally new meaning. There was no hope, so how could there be hopelessness. Both had disappeared.

The hopelessness was absolute and total. Hope had disappeared and with it its counterpart, hopelessness, had also disappeared. It was a totally new experience -- of being without hope. It was not a negative state. I have to use words -- but it was not a negative state. It was absolutely positive. It was not just absence, a presence was felt. Something was overflowing in me, overflooding me. And when I say I was helpless, I don't mean the word in the dictionary-sense. I simply say I was selfless. That's what I mean when I say helpless. I have recognized the fact that I am not, so I cannot depend on myself, so I cannot stand on my own ground -- there was no ground underneath. I was in an abyss... bottomless abyss. But there was no fear because there was nothing to protect. There was no fear because there was nobody to be afraid.

Those seven days were of tremendous transformation, total transformation. And the last day the presence of a totally new energy, a new light and new delight, became so intense that it was almost unbearable -- as if I was exploding, as if I was going mad with blissfulness. The new generation in the West has the right word for it -- I was blissed out, stoned.

It was impossible to make any sense out of it, what was happening. It was a very non-sense world -- difficult to figure it out, difficult to manage in categories, difficult to use words, languages, explanations. All scriptures appeared dead and all the words that have been used for this experience looked very pale, anaemic. This was so alive. It was like a tidal wave of bliss.

The whole day was strange, stunning, and it was a shattering experience. The past was disappearing, as if it had never belonged to me, as if I had read about it somewhere, as if I had dreamed about it, as if it was somebody else's story I have heard and somebody told it to me. I was becoming loose from my past, I was being uprooted from my history, I was losing my autobiography. I was becoming a non-being, what Buddha calls anatta. Boundaries were disappearing, distinctions were disappearing.

Mind was disappearing; it was millions of miles away. It was difficult to catch hold of it, it was rushing farther and farther away, and there was no urge to keep it close. I was simply indifferent about it all. It was okay. There was no urge to remain continuous with the past. By the evening it became so difficult to bear it -- it was hurting, it was painful. It was like when a woman goes into labour when a child is to be born, and the woman suffers tremendous pain -- the birth pangs.

I used to go to sleep in those days near about twelve or one in the night, but that day it was impossible to remain awake. My eyes were closing, it was difficult to keep them open. Something was very imminent, something was going to happen. It was difficult to say what it was -- maybe it is going to be my death -- but there was no fear. I was ready for it. Those seven days had been so beautiful that I was ready to die, nothing more was needed. They had been so tremendously blissful, I was so contented, that if death was coming, it was welcome.

But something was going to happen -- something like death, something very drastic, something which will be either a death or a new birth, a crucifixion or a resurrection -- but something of tremendous import was around just by the corner. And it was impossible to keep my eyes open. I was drugged.

I went to sleep near about eight. It was not like sleep. Now I can understand what Patanjali means when he says that sleep and samadhi are similar. Only with one difference -- that in samadhi you are fully awake and asleep also. Asleep and awake together, the whole body relaxed, every cell of the body totally relaxed, all functioning relaxed, and yet a light of awareness burns within you... clear, smokeless. You remain alert and yet relaxed, loose but fully awake. The body is in the deepest sleep possible and your consciousness is at its peak. The peak of consciousness and the valley of the body meet.

I went to sleep. It was a very strange sleep. The body was asleep, I was awake. It was so strange -- as if one was torn apart into two directions, two dimensions; as if the polarity has become completely focused, as if I was both the polarities together... the positive and negative were meeting, sleep and awareness were meeting, death and life were meeting. That is the moment when you can say 'the creator and the creation meet.'

It was weird. For the first time it shocks you to the very roots, it shakes your foundations. You can never be the same after that experience; it brings a new vision to your life, a new quality.

Near about twelve my eyes suddenly opened -- I had not opened them. The sleep was broken by something else. I felt a great presence around me in the room. It was a very small room. I felt a throbbing life all around me, a great vibration -- almost like a hurricane, a great storm of light, joy, ecstasy. I was drowning in it.

It was so tremendously real that everything became unreal. The walls of the room became unreal, the house became unreal, my own body became unreal. Everything was unreal because now there was for the first time reality. That's why when Buddha and Shankara say the world is maya, a mirage, it is difficult for us to understand. Because we know only this world, we don't have any comparison. This is the only reality we know. What are these people talking about -- this is maya, illusion? This is the only reality. Unless you come to know the really real, their words cannot be understood, their words remain theoretical. They look like hypotheses. Maybe this man is propounding a philosophy -- 'The world is unreal'.

When Berkley in the West said that the world is unreal, he was walking with one of his friends, a very logical man; the friend was almost a skeptic. He took a stone from the road and hit Berkley's feet hard. Berkley screamed, blood rushed out, and the skeptic said, 'Now, the world is unreal? You say the world is unreal? -- then why did you scream? This stone is unreal? -- then why did you scream? Then why are you holding your leg and why are you showing so much pain and anguish on your face. Stop this? It is all unreal.

Now this type of man cannot understand what Buddha means when he says the world is a mirage. He does not mean that you can pass through the wall. He is not saying this -- that you can eat stones and it will make no difference whether you eat bread or stones. He is not saying that. He is saying that there is a reality. Once you come to know it, this so-called reality simply pales out, simply becomes unreal. With a higher reality in vision the comparison arises, not otherwise.

In the dream; the dream is real. You dream every night. Dream is one of the greatest activities that you go on doing. If you live sixty years, twenty years you will sleep and almost ten years you will dream. Ten years in a life -- nothing else do you do so much. Ten years of continuous dreaming -- just think about it. And every night.... And every morning you say it was unreal, and again in the night when you dream, dream becomes real.

In a dream it is so difficult to remember that this is a dream. But in the morning it is so easy. What happens? You are the same person. In the dream there is only one reality. How to compare? How to say it is unreal? Compared to what? It is the only reality. Everything is as unreal as everything else so there is no comparison. In the morning when you open your eyes another reality is there. Now you can say it was all unreal. Compared to this reality, dream becomes unreal.

There is an awakening -- compared to THAT reality of THAT awakening, this whole reality becomes unreal. That night for the first time I understood the meaning of the word maya. Not that I had not known the word before, not that I was not aware of the meaning of the word. As you are aware, I was also aware of the meaning -- but I had never understood it before. How can you understand without experience?

That night another reality opened its door, another dimension became available. Suddenly it was there, the other reality, the separate reality, the really real, or whatsoever you want to call it -- call it god, call it truth, call it dhamma, call it tao, or whatsoever you will. It was nameless. But it was there -- so opaque, so transparent, and yet so solid one could have touched it. It was almost suffocating me in that room. It was too much and I was not yet capable of absorbing it.

A deep urge arose in me to rush out of the room, to go under the sky -- it was suffocating me. It was too much! It will kill me! If I had remained a few moments more, it would have suffocated me -- it looked like that.

I rushed out of the room, came out in the street. A great urge was there just to be under the sky with the stars, with the trees, with the earth... to be with nature. And immediately as I came out, the feeling of being suffocated disappeared. It was too small a place for such a big phenomenon. Even the sky is a small place for that big phenomenon. It is bigger than the sky. Even the sky is not the limit for it. But then I felt more at ease.

I walked towards the nearest garden. It was a totally new walk, as if gravitation had disappeared. I was walking, or I was running, or I was simply flying; it was difficult to decide. There was no gravitation, I was feeling weightless -- as if some energy was taking me. I was in the hands of some other energy.

For the first time I was not alone, for the first time I was no more an individual, for the first time the drop has come and fallen into the ocean. Now the whole ocean was mine, I was the ocean. There was no limitation. A tremendous power arose as if I could do anything whatsoever. I was not there, only the power was there.

I reached to the garden where I used to go every day. The garden was closed, closed for the night. It was too late, it was almost one o'clock in the night. The gardeners were fast asleep. I had to enter the garden like a thief, I had to climb the gate. But something was pulling me towards the garden. It was not within my capacity to prevent myself. I was just floating. That's what I mean when I say again and again 'float with the river, don't push the river'. I was relaxed, I was in a let-go. I was not there. IT was there, call it god -- god was there.

I would like to call it IT, because god is too human a word, and has become too dirty by too much use, has become too polluted by so many people. Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, priests and politicians -- they all have corrupted the beauty of the word. So let me call it IT. IT was there and I was just carried away... carried by a tidal wave.

The moment I entered the garden everything became luminous, it was all over the place -- the benediction, the blessedness. I could see the trees for the first time -- their green, their life, their very sap running. The whole garden was asleep, the trees were asleep. But I could see the whole garden alive, even the small grass leaves were so beautiful.

I looked around. One tree was tremendously luminous -- the maulshree tree. It attracted me, it pulled me towards itself. I had not chosen it, god himself has chosen it. I went to the tree, I sat under the tree. As I sat there things started settling. The whole universe became a benediction.

It is difficult to say how long I was in that state. When I went back home it was four o'clock in the morning, so I must have been there by clock time at least three hours -- but it was infinity. It had nothing to do with clock time. It was timeless. Those three hours became the whole eternity, endless eternity. There was no time, there was no passage of time; it was the virgin reality -- uncorrupted, untouchable, unmeasurable.

And that day something happened that has continued -- not as a continuity -- but it has still continued as an undercurrent. Not as a permanency -- each moment it has been happening again and again. It has been a miracle each moment. That night... and since that night I have never been in the body. I am hovering around it. I became tremendously powerful and at the same time very fragile. I became very strong, but that strength is not the strength of a Mohammed Ali. That strength is not the strength of a rock, that strength is the strength of a rose flower -- so fragile in his strength... so fragile, so sensitive, so delicate.

The rock will be there, the flower can go any moment, but still the flower is stronger than the rock because it is more alive. Or, the strength of a dewdrop on a leaf of grass just shining; in the morning sun -- so beautiful, so precious, and yet can slip any moment. So incomparable in its grace, but a small breeze can come and the dewdrop can slip and be lost forever.

Buddhas have a strength which is not of this world. Their strength is totally of love... Like a rose flower or a dewdrop. Their strength is very fragile, vulnerable. Their strength is the strength of life not of death. Their power is not of that which kills; their power is of that which creates. Their power is not of violence, aggression; their power is that of compassion.

But I have never been in the body again, I am just hovering around the body. And that's why I say it has been a tremendous miracle. Each moment I am surprised I am still here, I should not be. I should have left any moment, still I am here. Every morning I open my eyes and I say, 'So, again I am still here?' Because it seems almost impossible. The miracle has been a continuity.

Just the other day somebody asked a question -- 'Osho, you are getting so fragile and delicate and so sensitive to the smells of hair oils and shampoos that it seems we will not be able to see you unless we all go bald.' By the way, nothing is wrong with being bald -- bald is beautiful. Just as 'black is beautiful', so 'bald is beautiful'. But that is true and you have to be careful about it.

I am fragile, delicate and sensitive. That is my strength. If you throw a rock at a flower nothing will happen to the rock, the flower will be gone. But still you cannot say that the rock is more powerful than the flower. The flower will be gone because the flower was alive. And the rock -- nothing will happen to it because it is dead. The flower will be gone because the flower has no strength to destroy. The flower will simply disappear and give way to the rock. The rock has a power to destroy because the rock is dead.

Remember, since that day I have never been in the body really; just a delicate thread joins me with the body. And I am continuously surprised that somehow the whole must be willing me to be here, because I am no more here with my own strength, I am no more here on my own. It must be the will of the whole to keep me here, to allow me to linger a little more on this shore. Maybe the whole wants to share something with you through me.

Since that day the world is unreal. Another world has been revealed. When I say the world is unreal I don't mean that these trees are unreal. These trees are absolutely real -- but the way you see these trees is unreal. These trees are not unreal in themselves -- they exist in god, they exist in absolute reality -- but the way you see them you never see them; you are seeing something else, a mirage.

You create your own dream around you and unless you become awake you will continue to dream. The world is unreal because the world that you know is the world of your dreams. When dreams drop and you simply encounter the world that is there, then the real world. There are not two things, god and the world. God is the world if you have eyes, clear eyes, without any dreams, without any dust of the dreams, without any haze of sleep; if you have clear eyes, clarity, perceptiveness, there is only god.

Then somewhere god is a green tree, and somewhere else god is a shining star, and somewhere else god is a cuckoo, and somewhere else god is a flower, and somewhere else a child and somewhere else a river -- then only god is. The moment you start seeing, only god is. But right now whatsoever you see is not the truth, it is a projected lie. That is the meaning of a mirage. And once you see, even for a single split moment, if you can see, if you can allow yourself to see, you will find immense benediction present all over, everywhere -- in the clouds, in the sun, on the earth.

This is a beautiful world. But I am not talking about your world, I am talking about my world. Your world is very ugly, your world is your world created by a self, your world is a projected world. You are using the real world as a screen and projecting your own ideas on it. When I say the world is real, the world is tremendously beautiful, the world is luminous with infinity, the world is light and delight, it is a celebration, I mean my world -- or your world if you drop your dreams.

When you drop your dreams you see the same world as any Buddha has ever seen. When you dream you dream privately. Have you watched it? -- that dreams are private. You cannot share them even with your beloved. You cannot invite your wife to your dream -- or your husband, or your friend. You cannot say, 'Now, please come tonight in my dream. I would like to see the dream together.' It is not possible. Dream is a private thing, hence it is illusory, it has no objective reality.

God is a universal thing. Once you come out of your private dreams, it is there. It has been always there. Once your eyes are clear, a sudden illumination -- suddenly you are overflooded with beauty, grandeur and grace. That is the goal, that is the destiny. Let me repeat. Without effort you will never reach it, with effort nobody has ever reached it. You will need great effort, and only then there comes a moment.when effort becomes futile. But it becomes futile only when you have come to the very peak of it, never before it. When you have come to the very pinnacle of your effort -- all that you can do you have done -- then suddenly there is no need to do anything any more. You drop the effort.

But nobody can drop it in the middle, it can be dropped only at the extreme end. So go to the extreme end if you want to drop it. Hence I go on insisting: make as much effort as you can, put your whole energy and total heart in it, so that one day you can see -- now effort is not going to lead me anywhere. And that day it will not be you who will drop the effort, it drops on its own accord. And when it drops on its own accord, meditation happens.

Meditation is not a result of your efforts, meditation is a happening. When your efforts drop, suddenly meditation is there... the benediction of it, the blessedness of it, the glory of it. It is there like a presence... luminous, surrounding you and surrounding everything. It fills the whole earth and the whole sky.

That meditation cannot be created by human effort. Human effort is too limited. That blessedness is so infinite. You cannot manipulate it. It can happen only when you are in a tremendous surrender. When you are not there only then it can happen. When you are a no-self -- no desire, not going anywhere -- when you are just herenow, not doing anything in particular, just being, it happens. And it comes in waves and the waves become tidal. It comes like a storm, and takes you away into a totally new reality. But first you have to do all that you can do, and then you have to learn non-doing. The doing of the non-doing is the greatest doing, and the effort of effortlessness is the greatest effort.

Your meditation that you create by chanting a mantra or by sitting quiet and still and forcing yourself, is a very mediocre meditation. It is created by you, it cannot be bigger than you. It is homemade, and the maker is always bigger than the made. You have made it by sitting, forcing in a yoga posture, chanting 'rama, rama, rama' or anything -- 'blah, blah, blah' -- anything. You have forced the mind to become still. It is a forced stillness. It is not that quiet that comes when you are not there. It is not that silence which comes when you are almost non-existential. It is not that beautitude which descends on you like a dove.

It is said when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, god descended in him, or the holy ghost descended in him like a dove. Yes, that is exactly so. When you are not there peace descends in you... fluttering like a dove... reaches in your heart and abides there and abides there forever.

You are your undoing, you are the barrier. Meditation is when the meditator is not. When the mind ceases with all its activities -- seeing that they are futile -- then the unknown penetrates you, overwhelms you.

The mind must cease for god to be. Knowledge must cease for knowing to be. You must disappear, you must give way. You must become empty, then only you can be full.

That night I became empty and became full. I became non-existential and became existence. That night I died and was reborn. But the one that was reborn has nothing to do with that which died, it is a discontinuous thing. On the surface it looks continuous but it is discontinuous. The one who died, died totally; nothing of him has remained.

Believe me, nothing of him has remained, not even a shadow. It died totally, utterly. It is not that I am just a modified RUP, transformed, modified form, transformed form of the old. No, there has been no continuity. That day of March twenty-first, the person who had lived for many many lives, for millennia, simply died. Another being, absolutely new, not connected at all with the old, started to exist.

Religion just gives you a total death. Maybe that's why the whole day previous to that happening I was feeling some urgency like death, as if I am going to die -- and I really died. I have known many other deaths but they were nothing compared to it, they were partial deaths.

Sometimes the body died, sometimes a part of the mind died, sometimes a part of the ego died, but as far as the person was concerned, it remained. Renovated many times, decorated many times, changed a little bit here and there, but it remained, the continuity remained.

That night the death was total. It was a date with death and God simultaneously.

If you are planning to go to India some time in your life, LONELY PLANET, is the best travel book
to buy and read before travelling. Has all kinds of good tips, where to stay, and good prices for all needs, upper, middle, lower pockets.:)

Nasrudin used to take a donkey across a frontier every day, with the panniers loaded with straw.

Since he admitted to being a smuggler when he trudged home every night, the frontier guards searched him again and again.

They searched his person, staffed the straw, steeped it in water, even burned it from time to time. [...] One of the customs officers met him years later.

"You can tell me now, Hasrudin," he said. "Whatever was it that you were smuggling, when we could never catch you out?"

"Donkeys," said Nasrudin.

:D

my hero

02-05-2012, 02:54 PM

Ma Anand Sheela: Rajneeshees' public face left Oregon but holds onto blame, bitterness
The Oregonian/April 14, 2011
By Les Saitz
Maisprach, Switzerland - The middle-aged man, his hair tousled, shuffles across the living room in his pajamas.

Sheela Birnstiel rises from her chair, takes him by the hand and guides him back to a seat. He beams at her attention.

This is the new world of Ma Anand Sheela.

Long gone from Oregon and the Rajneeshee commune, Birnstiel remade herself into a successful Swiss businesswoman.

With a compassionate yet direct demeanor, she operates two homes for the mentally disabled. Spite and outrage, her trademarks in Oregon, aren't evident.

Now 62, Sheela appears almost dowdy, dressed in sandals, an unadorned sweatshirt and casual slacks. Her graying hair frames a face plumped by age. Gold-rimmed glasses perch on her nose. She wears no makeup, no jewelry.

Her headquarters is a three-story house on a hillside above the small village of Maisprach, about an hour's drive from Zurich. She and her staff tend to 22 mentally disabled Swiss, ranging from middle age to seniors. The place is spotless, fresh smelling. She cares for another 12 patients in a modified bank building in a nearby village.

Over two days of interviews, Birnstiel -- who remarried in 1984 and was widowed in 1993 -- recounted how she got into the business and how her life unfolded after leaving Rancho Rajneesh. She spoke precisely and openly, until questioned about the darker events in Oregon, including murder plots and arson.

Birnstiel said Oregon shares the blame for the troubles between its residents and the worshipers who believed in the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. "We had done nothing to them. We legally bought a ranch. We legally went about our work."

She said bigots and corrupt politicians oppressed the sect.

"Have they really followed their Constitution? This is the question I would like answered," Birnstiel said.

She claims criminal acts against the sect went unpunished. As proof, she cited a time in 1983 when a bomb tore into the sect's hotel in downtown Portland. The perpetrator, she said, was let go on $2,000 bail and never tried.

She is wrong.

A radical Muslim was arrested after a bomb went off in his room at the hotel. He skipped out on $20,000 bail but was caught, returned to Oregon and convicted as the commune was collapsing. He served five years in prison, longer than any sentence handed out to Rajneeshees convicted of more serious crimes.

Birnstiel blamed her outrageous conduct on the guru. She only did his bidding. She is candid that she had no interest in spiritual enlightenment, the key draw of the guru. She was instead in love with the man.

"My own personal conflict with Bhagwan was a bigger issue," she said. "My love for Bhagwan had a priority over all problems."

That conflict became irreconcilable in 1985, Birnstiel explained. She said she was told of an order for 400 Valium tablets and learned they were for the guru. She said she was stunned. She had no idea he was taking drugs. He had always preached the need to face life without being intoxicated.

When she confronted him, he got angry, she said. He told her to stay out of it.

She said that same summer, the guru demanded she buy him a $1 million watch. She told him the commune couldn't divert money for that, but he persisted.

Birnstiel said that was the breaking point for her.

"I looked into my soul to see my responsibility," she said. "I decided I cannot compromise."

She said the conflicts between her and Rajneesh, and those with Oregonians, entrapped the women who were her key leaders.

"They were all good people. They wanted to do something for themselves. There were no criminals there," she said. Yet nearly everyone was later convicted of a crime.

Sheela pleaded guilty in the salad bar poisoning case under a so-called Alford plea, where she didn't admit guilt but conceded the evidence could convict her. Sheela took the plea, she said, because she didn't have the $2 million her lawyers said it would cost to fight the charges. She insists she got the better of the bargaining, with prosecutors agreeing to a two-year sentence when they wanted 20.

After prison, Sheela went to Europe, running restaurants in Germany and then Portugal. She fled back to Switzerland and its safety from extradition when she was tipped that American authorities wanted her on new charges.

That was in 1990, and she arrived in the Swiss town of Basel with no money.

The only job a local employment agency could offer was walking a retired man's dog for 10 Swiss francs an hour. She said she took the job and soon became the man's caretaker. That led her to taking three elderly ladies into her own home, the start of her care business.

Sheela appears to have done well. Her staff was respectful, even adoring. Yet Sheela's controlling nature flashed alive, as she directed a couch be moved a couple of inches to make passage easier, and that a nick in wainscoting be attended.

She has published a book about care home management and intends to write another.

Clearly, she remains bitter about Oregon, buttressing her refusal to talk about her own conduct.

"I am labeled a criminal. It is stamped on my forehead," she said. "I have been punished. Leave me alone."

lonestar

02-05-2012, 03:56 PM

Satsang, you will enjoy it ,nothing intellectual about it.

BTW are you a curious Aquarius?

"nothing intellicual about it"

Oh I see what youre saying. LOL

its good thing im a carefree, not really caring what other people think, harmless but very "curious" Sag. :D

It is a blessing and a curse being a sag. People love my carefree and free spirit, but they never really get it and i can be overwhelming in person. people are always trying to pull me back down out of the clouds which is a good thing because i can get too caught up in the future and forget about the NOW.:)

heartbeatsalute

02-05-2012, 05:43 PM

"nothing intellicual about it"

Oh I see what youre saying. LOL

its good thing im a carefree, not really caring what other people think, harmless but very "curious" Sag. :D

It is a blessing and a curse being a sag. People love my carefree and free spirit, but they never really get it and i can be overwhelming in person. people are always trying to pull me back down out of the clouds which is a good thing because i can get too caught up in the future and forget about the NOW.:)

Neat!, I know lots of Sag. friends, and they are a good fire sign, nice, interesting people. Hey, Osho was a sagittarius, born on December 11. :D

lonestar

02-05-2012, 06:02 PM

Neat!, I know lots of Sag. friends, and they are a good fire sign, nice, interesting people. Hey, Osho was a sagittarius, born on December 11. :D

imagine that. :D

Osho was not the only person to awaken but i really resonate with him. he was a freak. not in a bad way, but a freak with his awakened skills.

Yeah, he was in no way traditional, used humor to teach things, he said you have to get all your insanity out, meditation like No-Mind, ever done it? really fun and interesting ,active meditation, quite unusual, also laughter meditation.
To make mistakes ,and to learn from them.

Thanks for the video. :D

heartbeatsalute

02-05-2012, 06:45 PM

WE ARE WHAT WE THINK.
ALL THAT WE ARE ARISES WITH OUR THOUGHTS.
WITH OUR THOUGHTS WE MAKE THE WORLD.

It has been said to you again and again that the Eastern mystics believe that the world is illusory. It is true: they not only believe that the world is untrue, illusory, maya -- they know that it is maya, it is an illusion, a dream.

But when they use the word sansara -- the world -- they don't mean the objective world that science investigates; no, not at all. They don't mean the world of the trees and the mountains and the rivers; no, not at all. They mean the world that you create, spin and weave inside your mind, the wheel of the mind that goes on moving and spinning. Sansara has nothing to do with the outside world.

There are three things to be remembered. One is the outside world, the objective world. Buddha will never say anything about it because that is not his concern; he is not an Albert Einstein. Then there is a second world: the world of the mind, the world that the psychoanalysts, the psychiatrists, the psychologists investigate. Buddha will have a few things to say about it, not many, just a few -- in fact, one: that it is illusory, that it has no truth, either objective or subjective, that it is in between.

The first world is the objective world, which science investigates. The second world is the world of the mind, which the psychologist investigates. And the third world is your subjectivity, your interiority, your inner self.
Buddha's indication is towards the interiormost core of your being. But you are too much involved with the mind. Unless he helps you to become untrapped from the mind, you will never know the third, the real world: your inner substance. Hence he starts with the statement:

WE ARE WHAT WE THINK. That's what everybody is: his mind. ALL THAT WE ARE ARISES WITH OUR THOUGHTS.

Just imagine for a single moment that all thoughts have ceased...then who are you? If all thoughts cease for a single moment, then who are you? No answer will be coming. You cannot say, "I am a Catholic," "I am a Protestant," "I am a Hindu," "I am a Mohammedan" -- you cannot say that. All thoughts have ceased. So the Koran has disappeared, the Bible, the Gita...all words have ceased! You cannot even utter your
name. All language has disappeared so you cannot say to which country you belong, to which race. When thoughts cease, who are you? An utter emptiness, nothingness, no-thingness.

It is because of this that Buddha has used a strange word; nobody has ever done such a thing before, or since. The mystics have always used the word 'self' for the interiormost core of your being -- Buddha uses the word 'no-self'. And I perfectly agree with him; he is far more accurate, closer to truth. To use the word 'self' -- even if you use the word 'Self' with a capital 'S', does not make much difference. It continues to give you the sense of the ego, and with a capital 'S' it may give you an even bigger ego.

Buddha does not use the words atma, 'self', atta. He uses just the opposite word: 'no-self', anatma, anatta. He says when mind ceases, there is no self left -- you have become universal, you have overflowed the boundaries of the ego, you are a pure space, uncontaminated by anything. You are just a mirror reflecting nothing.

WE ARE WHAT WE THINK. ALL THAT WE ARE ARISES WITH OUR THOUGHTS. WITH OUR THOUGHTS WE MAKE THE WORLD.

If you really want to know who, in reality, you are, you will have to learn how to cease as a mind, how to stop thinking. That's what meditation is all about. Meditation means going out of the mind, dropping the mind and moving in the space called no-mind. And in no-mind you will know the ultimate truth, dhamma.

And moving from mind to no-mind is the step, pada. And this is the whole secret of THE DHAMMAPADA.

SPEAK OR ACT WITH AN IMPURE MIND
AND TROUBLE WILL FOLLOW YOU
AS THE WHEEL FOLLOWS THE OX THAT DRAWS THE CART.

Whenever Buddha uses the phrase 'impure mind' you can misunderstand it. By 'impure mind' he means mind, because all mind is impure. Mind as such is impure, and no-mind is pure. Purity means no-mind; impurity means mind.
SPEAK OR ACT WITH AN IMPURE MIND -- speak or act with mind -- AND TROUBLE WILL FOLLOW YOU.... Misery is a by-product, the shadow of the mind, the shadow of the illusory mind. Misery is a nightmare. You suffer only because you are asleep. And there is no way of escaping it while you are asleep. Unless you become awakened the nightmare will persist. It may change forms, it can have millions of forms, but it will persist.

Misery is the shadow of the mind: mind means sleep, mind means unconsciousness, mind means unawareness. Mind means not knowing who you are and still pretending that you know. Mind means not knowing where you are going and still pretending that you know the goal, that you know what life is meant for -- not knowing anything about life and still believing that you know.

This mind will bring misery as certainly AS THE WHEEL FOLLOWS THE OX THAT DRAWS THE CART.

WE ARE WHAT WE THINK.
ALL THAT WE ARE ARISES WITH OUR THOUGHTS.
WITH OUR THOUGHTS WE MAKE THE WORLD.
SPEAK OR ACT WITH A PURE MIND
AND HAPPINESS WILL FOLLOW YOU
AS YOUR SHADOW, UNSHAKABLE.

Again, remember: when Buddha says "pure mind" he means no-mind. It is very difficult to translate a man like Buddha. It is almost an impossible job, because a man like Buddha uses language in his own way; he creates his own language. He cannot use the ordinary language with ordinary meanings, because he has something extraordinary to convey.

Ordinary words are absolutely meaningless in reference to the experience of a Buddha. But you should understand the problem. The problem is, he cannot use an absolutely new language; nobody will understand. It will look like gibberish.

That's how the word 'gibberish' came into existence. It comes from a Sufi; his name was Jabbar. He invented a new language. Nobody was able to make head or tail of it. How can you understand an absolutely new language? He looked like a madman, uttering nonsense, utter nonsense. That's how it happens! If you listen to a Chinese and you don't understand Chinese, it is utter nonsense.

Somebody was asking a man who had gone to China, "How do they find such strange names for people? -- Ching, Chung, Chang...."
The man said, "They have a way: they collect all the spoons in the house and they throw them upwards, and when those spoons fall down...ching! chung! chang! or whatsoever sound they make, that's how they name a child."

But the same is the case: if a Chinese hears English he thinks, "What nonsense!"

If that is the case with languages which millions of people use, what will be the case with a Buddha if he invents an original language? Only he will understand it and nobody else. Jabbar did that -- must have been a very courageous man. People thought that he was mad.
The English word 'gibberish' comes from Jabbar. Nobody knows what he was saying. Nobody has even tried to collect it...how to collect it? There was no alphabet. And what he was saying was making no sense at all, so we don't know what treasures we have missed.

The problem for Buddha is that either he has to use your language as you use it -- then he cannot convey his experience at all -- or he has to invent a new language nobody will understand. So all great masters have to be very much in the middle. They will use your language, but they will give your words their color, their flavor. The bottles will be yours, the wine will be theirs. And thinking that because the bottles are yours the wine is also yours, you will carry them for centuries. And there is a possibility that, thinking
that it is your wine because the bottle is yours, sometimes you may drink out of it, you may become drunk.

That's why it is very difficult to translate. Buddha used a language that was understood by the people who surrounded him, but he gave twists and turns to words in such a subtle way that even people who knew the language were not alerted, were not shocked. They thought they were hearing their own language.

Buddha uses the words "pure mind" for no-mind, because if you say "no-mind," immediately it becomes impossible to understand. But if you say "pure mind," then some communication is possible. Slowly slowly, he will convince you that pure mind means no-mind. But that will take time; very slowly you have to be caught and trapped into a totally new experience. But remember always: pure mind means no-mind, impure means mind.

By putting these adjectives, impure and pure, he is compromising with you so that you don't become alerted too early and escape. You have to be allured, seduced. All great masters are seductive -- that is their art. They seduce you in such a way that slowly slowly, you are ready to drink anything, whatsoever they give. First they supply you with ordinary water, then slowly slowly, wine has to be mixed in it. Then water has to be withdrawn...and one day you are completely drunk. But it has to be a very slow process.

As you go deeper into the sutras you will understand. Impure mind means mind, pure mind means no-mind. And happiness will follow you if you have a pure mind or no mind.... HAPPINESS WILL FOLLOW YOU AS YOUR SHADOW, UNSHAKABLE.

Misery is a by-product, so is bliss. Misery is a by-product of being asleep, bliss is a by-product of being awake. Hence you cannot seek and search for bliss directly, and those who seek and search for bliss directly are bound to fail, doomed to fail. Bliss can be attained only by those who don't seek bliss directly; on the contrary, they seek awareness. And when awareness comes, bliss comes of its own accord, just like your shadow, unshakable.

"LOOK HOW HE ABUSED ME AND BEAT ME,
HOW HE THREW ME DOWN AND ROBBED ME."
LIVE WITH SUCH THOUGHTS AND YOU LIVE IN HATE.
"LOOK HOW HE ABUSED ME AND BEAT ME,
HOW HE THREW ME DOWN AND ROBBED ME."
ABANDON SUCH THOUGHTS, AND LIVE IN LOVE.

Something of profound importance: hate exists with the past and the future -- love needs no past, no future. Love exists in the present. Hate has a reference in the past: somebody abused you yesterday and you are carrying it like a wound, a hangover. Or you are afraid that somebody is going to abuse you tomorrow -- a fear, a shadow of the fear. And you are already getting ready, you are getting prepared to encounter it.

Dhammapada Vol 1 Ch.5, Osho

heartbeatsalute

02-05-2012, 06:52 PM

Osho on Patanjali Yoga Sutra - "An Object is known or unknown depending on whether the mind is colored by it or not."

Osho - Now, one thing more: when you look at an object, your mind colors the object and the object colors your mind. That's how things are known or unknown. When you look at a flower you say, "Beautiful." You have projected something on the flower. The flower is also projecting itself onto your mind: its color, its form. Your mind gets in tune with the form and the color of the flower; your mind gets colored by the flower. That's the only way to know a thing. If you are not colored by the flower, the flower may be there but you have not known it.
http://www.messagefrommasters.com/oshoyoga/OshoMeditationQuotes2.jpg

Have you watched? -- you are in the market-place and somebody says, "Your house is on fire!" You start running, you pass by many people. Somebody says, "Hello, where are you going?" but you don't listen. On another day, at another time, you would have listened, but now your house is on fire. Your mind is totally directed towards your house. Now your attention is not here. You are not getting colored. You may pass a beautiful flower, but you will not say 'beautiful', you will not even recognize that the flower is there -- impossible.

Osho

I have heard of one man, a very great philosopher; his name was Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. The Governor General was going to give him an award for his services, his learning, his scholarship, but he was a very poor man. He lived in Calcutta, a poor Bengali, and his clothes were not such that he should go wearing those clothes when the award was to be given to him. So the friends came and they said, "Don't be worried, we have ordered beautiful clothes for you." But he said, "I have never used anything more costly than these clothes. Just to take an award, should I change my whole way of life?"

But the friends convinced him and he became ready. The same evening he was coming home from the market, just walking behind a Mohammedan who was walking with great dignity -- very slow, with grace -- a very beautiful man. And then a servant came running to that Mohammedan and said, "Sir, your house is on fire," but the Mohammedan continued the same way. The servant said, "Have you heard me or not? Your house is on fire! Everything is burning!" The Mohammedan said, "I have heard you, but just because the house is on fire I cannot change my way of walking. And even if I run, I cannot save the house, so what is the point?"

Ishwar Chandra listened to this dialogue between the servant and the master. He could not believe his eyes, he could not believe his ears: "What is this man saying?" And then he remembered: "I am just changing my clothes and going in borrowed clothes just to receive an award?" He dropped the idea. The next day he appeared in his ordinary poor clothes. The Governor General asked, the friends asked; he related the story.

Now, this Mohammedan had a certain awareness, a certain awareness which cannot be clouded by anything, a certain wakefulness which is not easily disturbed. Ordinarily, everything colors you and you color everything. When this coloring stops, this reciprocal coloring stops, things start appearing in their true being. Then you come to see reality as it is. Then you come to know, 'This is It'. Then you come to know that which is.

These sutras are just indicators that unless a state of no-mind is achieved, ignorance cannot be destroyed. Awareness is against ignorance, knowledge is not against ignorance. So don't become parrots, and don't rely only on memorizing. Don't cram; try to see. Become more capable of seeing things as they are. The Vedas, the Upanishads, The Koran, the Bible, cannot help much. You can become great learned scholars, but you will remain, deep down, just fools. And when ignorance is decorated by knowledge then one clings to it. One does not want to destroy it. In fact, ego feels very happy.

You will have to choose. If you choose the ego, you will remain ignorant. If you want awareness, you will have to become aware of the tricks the ego goes on playing with you.

This morning, contemplate what you know and what you don't know, and don't be easily satisfied. Go as deep as possible into what you know and what you don't know. If you can decide that this you know and this you don't know, you have taken a great step. And that step is the most significant step a man can ever take because then the pilgrimage starts, the pilgrimage towards reality. If you go on believing that you know many things, and you don't know them, you are deceiving yourself and you will remain hypnotized by your knowledge. You will waste your whole life in drunkenness. Ordinarily, people live just like they are deeply asleep, walking in their sleep, doing things in their sleep, somnambulists.

Gurdjieff took Ouspensky and his thirty disciples to a very faraway place, and he told his thirty disciples to be absolutely silent for three months. He told them to be so silent that they should not communicate even through eyes or gestures. And thirty persons were to remain in a small bungalow as if there were not thirty people, but as if each one was living alone. After a few days a few people left, because it was too much, impossible. And Gurdjieff was a hard task-master. If he saw somebody smiling at somebody else, immediately he was expelled because he had communicated; the silence was broken. He said, "Live in this house as if you are alone. There are twenty-nine other people, but you are not concerned with them -- just as if they are not."

By the time the three months ended only three persons were left; twenty-seven had left. Ouspensky was one of those three persons. Those three persons became so silent that Gurdjieff took them outside the bungalow into the town, moved them in the market-place, and Ouspensky writes in his diary, "For the first time I could see that the whole of humanity is walking in sleep. People are talking in their sleep. Shopkeepers are selling things, customers are purchasing things, great crowds are going here and there, and I could see that moment that everybody is fast asleep; nobody is aware." He said, "We felt so uncomfortable in that mad place that we asked Gurdjieff to take us back to the bungalow. But he said, 'That bungalow was just an experiment to show you the reality of humanity, and you also have lived the same way. Because now you are silent you can see that people are just drunk, unconscious; not living really, just moving not knowing why, not knowing for what.'"

Watch yourself, meditate over it, and see whether you are living in sleep. If you are living in sleep, then come out of it. Meditation is nothing but an effort to gather together the small consciousness that you have, to gather together, to crystallize it, to make all sorts of efforts to increase it more and more, and to decrease unconsciousness. By and by, consciousness becomes higher and higher: less and less dreamy; less and less thoughts come to you, and there are more and more gaps of silence. Through those gaps, windows will open to the divine. One day, when you have become really capable and you can say that, "I can exist for a few minutes without any thought or dream interfering with me," for the first time you will know. The purpose is fulfilled.

From deep sleep you have come to deep awareness. When deep sleep and deep awareness meet, the circle is complete. That's what samadhi is. Patanjali calls it kaivalya -- pure consciousness, alone; so pure, so alone that nothing else exists. Only in this aloneness does one become blissful. Only in this aloneness, one comes to know what truth is. Truth is your being. It is there but you are asleep. Awake.

Source - Osho Book "Yoga: The Alpha and The Omega, Vol 10"

lonestar

02-05-2012, 07:14 PM

you asked me about meditation. everyone is infinitely different and thats whats cool about Osho the terminator that he has many different meditation techniques. im very grateful.

but no laughter meditation for me. i already laugh out loud many times just reading osho. like he was once saying something like just take a half step backwards. just a little half step back into the void. lol

the kind of meditation for a high energy extrovert like me is a calming meditation. :D i sometimes go with the slow breathing or the um noise he talks about. anything to release built energy. or sometimes even just looking around for a void in the sky. even in the void i see all kinds of movements of particles dancing. i talked with someone else in another thread who has also seen them so im not crazy alone. she called them globles or something. :D

do you see them?

what about auras do you see those? i dont.

yet...:D

heartbeatsalute

02-05-2012, 09:36 PM

you asked me about meditation. everyone is infinitely different and thats whats cool about Osho the terminator that he has many different meditation techniques. im very grateful.

but no laughter meditation for me. i already laugh out loud many times just reading osho. like he was once saying something like just take a half step backwards. just a little half step back into the void. lol

the kind of meditation for a high energy extrovert like me is a calming meditation. :D i sometimes go with the slow breathing or the um noise he talks about. anything to release built energy. or sometimes even just looking around for a void in the sky. even in the void i see all kinds of movements of particles dancing. i talked with someone else in another thread who has also seen them so im not crazy alone. she called them globles or something. :D

do you see them?

what about auras do you see those? i dont.

yet...:D

Have you ever done the Osho Kundalini meditation, done in the evening?
It gets very interesting specially towards the end, when after you have shaken a bit, you lie down, with no music in silence,when you have to wake up, you truly are in meditation, you feel it. But practice the one you like best.

NO, I don't see auras.But I know people that do. Quite interesting.

A calmed passive meditation is the Nadabrahma, i like that one, i'm sure you will too. It has pleasant background music.

THE ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER virus...
(Terminates some files, leaves, but will be back)

THE LORENA BOBBITT virus...
(Reformats your hard drive into a 3.5 inch floppy, then discards it through Windows)

THE OSHO virus...
(Erases everything permanently and forever)

courtesy Avibha Gomati

heartbeatsalute

02-05-2012, 10:10 PM

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Therapy/F0921.jpg

Osho - Accept your limitations, accept your imperfections

Osho - Create fear... create as much fear as you can. That has been the policy of the society. Hells have been created just to catch hold of you; heavens have been created just to reward those who will follow the dictates. All are imaginary: there is no hell, no heaven. But these rewards and punishments are subtle strategies, and they have worked up to now, and they have destroyed all human dignity.

This is not a gut-feeling in you. Your gut-feeling and the conscience created by the society have got mixed up. The gut-feeling is to DO something -- yes, that is a gut-feeling. When energy is there, one wants to do something; that is natural. Energy wants to be expressed. But WITH the motive to be worthy, that is a conscience part which is getting mixed with your gut-feeling. Be clear about it!

You have been messed around by the society in every possible way. You have been confused so much that you have to depend on somebody. Either you go to the priest -- in the old days you used to go to the priest. In India they still go to the priest. In the West the new priest has arisen: the psychotherapist, the psychiatrist, the psychologist -- go to him.

And the miracle is that the priest is just like you, maybe even more in a mess than you are, but still you go to him to find good advice. Yes, he repeats good advice like a parrot. Your psychotherapist, your psychiatrist, your psychoanalyst, may be in deeper anxiety, in more tensions than you are.

Osho

Just the other night one of my sannyasins was asking me, "Osho, you had told me last time when I came here, 'Look for the lighter side of life, count the roses, ignore the thorns. They are there, take note of them, but don't pay too much attention to them.' But my psychoanalyst has said, 'This is dangerous, this is going to repress your emotions.' So I am puzzled -- what to do?"

I told him, "You just wait a few days, your psychoanalyst will be here...!" But I was not aware that this sannyasin himself is a psychoanalyst. Just later on Vivek told me that he himself is a psychoanalyst. Now, one psychoanalyst going to another psychoanalyst -- for what? And that one may be going to somebody else.

THE FOUNDER OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Sigmund Freud, was one of the most pathological persons you can imagine -- very superstitious. You will laugh if you go into his biography about how such a man could become the founder of psychoanalysis, and how such a man could be trusted, that what he was saying was true.

One of his friends gave him the idea that just as each woman has a twenty-eight-day period when her menstruation comes, exactly like that each man has a twenty-three-day period. There is some truth in it -- not twenty-three days, exactly twenty-eight days. Now much more research has been done on it.

Those four, five days when a woman goes through the period are sad, depressive, dull, negative -- exactly like that man also goes into a negative state each month for four, five days. Of course, his period is not very visible, but it is there; it is a psychological fact. It should be there, because men and women are not very different.

So the friend's idea was on the right track. Sigmund Freud suddenly got one idea -- lying down in his bed, he was thinking about twenty-eight and twenty-three -- suddenly an idea flashed in his mind: twenty-eight plus twenty-three means fifty-one, and he could not sleep the whole night. He became certain by the morning that he was going to live fifty-one years -- a very great gut-feeling. And he started talking about it twenty-eight plus twenty-three -- fifty-one years and he will die.

And the fifty-first year came and passed... and he did not die. Then something else had to be found. The day he was expecting to die, his phone number was changed and the end of the phone number was sixty-two. So he said, "Look, another indication: so now I am going to die at sixty-two." But that day also came and was passing.

But the people like Sigmund Freud are not easy... they will find something or other. He was staying in a hotel and the number of the room was eighty-two, so he said, "Look, another indication from above -- at eighty-two I am going to die -- that is absolutely certain."
And that day also passed. He died when he was eighty-three.

Such superstitious people... he was so afraid of death, that's why he was so much concerned about it. He was so afraid of death that five times in his life he fainted publicly because somebody started talking about death. He used to faint flat on the ground. Just the IDEA of death! And such a pathological, neurotic person became the founder of psychoanalysis.

And he used to project himself: whatsoever was true for him he thought was true for every human being. That is the very limit of nonsense. All that he has said about man is not about man -- it is about Sigmund Freud. And Sigmund Freud is a single individual; he does not represent man. Nobody represents man! Nobody can ever represent man. So maybe a few people are helped by psychoanalysis, very few people -- rarely have I seen a person who has been helped by psychoanalysis -- but those are the people who are of the same type as Sigmund Freud.

And now much research has happened and it has been found that even those people who are helped are not helped by psychoanalysis but by something else. In one experiment, twenty-five persons were given psychoanalysis for six months, and twenty-five persons were just kept waiting and were told, "Soon your psychoanalysis will start." They were all suffering from the same kind of illness, and the result was very surprising.

The twenty-five who were given psychoanalysis were helped a little bit, but the twenty-five who were kept waiting were helped far more. Just waiting helped them far more. In fact, this secret has been known in the East, it has been practised for centuries. If you take a mental case into a Zen monastery, they put him in isolation for three weeks; nobody talks to him -- just the opposite of psychoanalysis -- nobody talks to him, nobody listens to him. They just keep him isolated; somebody goes, absolutely silently, and puts the food there, comes back. He has to live with himself for three weeks... and miracles have been happening down the ages.

Just putting him there for three weeks in isolation, slowly slowly he cools down -- no psychoanalysis, no therapy, just isolation. In fact, he was suffering too much from people -- the stress of being in a crowd continuously.

Psychoanalysis may not be the real cause of help, but the length of time -- two years, three years, four years, the psychoanalysis continues. It continues as long as you can afford it; it depends on you. If you have enough money, it can continue your whole life. In fact, psychoanalysis never comes to a termination. It cannot come, because the mind is very inventive. It goes on inventing more and more rubbish. It starts enjoying, slowly slowly, because the more rubbish it brings up, the more happy the psychotherapist feels. Seeing him happy, it obliges more.

Whatsoever the expectations of the psychotherapist are, the patient fulfills them. Patients are really patient people, very obliging, courteous. Good people they are! That's why they are suffering; they are not hard people -- not hardware but software. Because they are soft they are suffering. The hard guys are not suffering; the hard guys make others suffer. The soft guys become victims. Three, four years Lying down on the couch, talking nonsense, waiting, waiting, waiting -- it helps one to unwind, one becomes a little more relaxed. And somebody is listening to you very attentively, at least pretending that he is listening very attentively.

My own observation is that the attention of the psychotherapist is of immense value. This is a world where nobody gives you any attention. If the husband wants to talk to the wife she says, "There is so much work to be done in the kitchen -- and the dishes have to be washed and I have no time." If the wife wants to talk to the husband, he is tired from the whole day at the office and the work and the traffic, and he wants to watch the TV.

A survey says that the average husband/wife communication in America is only thirty-three minutes per day -- and that is the average. And in that thirty-three minutes you can count fighting, nagging, pillow-throwing, and every kind of thing. Thirty-three minutes only between husband and wife -- out of twenty-four hours?

A great need has arisen that somebody should listen to you. Hence the psychotherapist helps -- he is a professional listener. That is the only quality that he has, the only qualification really. You can start the business -- no other qualification is needed -- if you know only one thing: how to be attentively sitting there by the side and listening. Just listening attentively will help. The person starts feeling, "I have some worth. Somebody..." And the more he has paid, the more it helps because the person who is listening is no ordinary psychotherapist, not run-of-the-mill."... Somebody special, very famous, world-known -- and listening so attentively to me?" The very idea gives worth, "Then I must be saying something immensely beautiful."

Gibberish he may be bringing up. That's what in psycho-babble is called 'free association' -- anything that comes to your mind, bring it up. If such gibberish is being listened to so attentively, a great need is fulfilled -- he feels worthy, he feels important, he feels somebody.

Remember, this society has messed you up so much that man as such is almost on the verge of going insane. All love has disappeared, all communication has disappeared, all friendship has disappeared, all aesthetic sensitivity has disappeared. People have become like zombies. They talk to each other yet they don't talk, they don't meet.

This society is an ill society, and when I say 'this society' I mean all the societies that exist in the world, more or less, in this way or that, they are ill -- because in the past, for centuries, we have been creating a model of man which is wrong. We are giving people ideals and saying "Unless you fulfill THESE ideals you will never be worthy." And those ideals are impossible. We are giving people ideas of being perfect. and once the idea of being perfect enters in one's being, it turns one into a neurotic.

Accept your limitations, accept your imperfections. That's what it means to be a human being! And accept yourself as you are -- with joy, not in helplessness. Because GOD accepts you -- this is my basic teaching -- God accepts you, accept yourself; love yourself. Let there be a great upsurge of self-love. And out of that love you will start becoming creative; a person who loves himself is bound to become creative. I am not saying he will become famous; I am not saying that he will be a Picasso or an Ezra Pound or a Pablo Neruda, no -- he may be, he may not be. But that is irrelevant! The real thing is to enjoy creativity. Whatsoever you do, do it with joy, bring your total intelligence to it, be meditative in it.

On one of his birthdays his friends arranged a competition for who could act most like
Charlie Chaplin. There were going to be three prizes, and from all over the world many
people participated in the competition. And the final competition was going to be held in
London. Charlie Chaplin, just to have fun, entered the competition from a faraway place.
And because there were so many pretenders, nobody could even see that Charlie Chaplin
was part of the competition. He was certainly hoping -- in fact, he was absolutely certain
-- that he would win the first prize and that he would have the last laugh. But it turned out
otherwise. He got the second prize. Somebody else was more authentically Charlie
Chaplin than Charlie Chaplin himself.

It is possible that a woman with makeup can, as you say, Sobel, look very beautiful. But
she has to be ugly in the first place; otherwise why should she bother? And it is not that I
have not seen good makeup; I have seen it. For thousands of lives what have I been doing
here? Although I have not seen YOU, I have seen so many people like you that I can say
many things even about you.

The first thing is that you must be fat. If you are not you can stand up and everybody can
judge. Only fat people become interested in makeup. Secondly, you must be a "homo,"
because only "homos" become interested in the artificial. And if so many beautiful
women here are not turning you on, that simply means one thing: that a woman as such
cannot turn you on; you need men to turn you on. In that way, homosexuality is a very
great spiritual development, because heterosexuality is just natural, it is biological;
homosexuality is an invention of man. The bisexual person, who is both, of course, is far
more rich. He can be turned on by both men and women; he has a far richer sexuality.

And from your name it is clear that you are a Jew. Now, a Jew, "homo" and fat...what
else is needed to become a freelance makeup artist? You have all the qualifications for it.
You say, "The other day in discourse you mentioned that when a woman wears red
lipstick it is ugly because it is not natural." In the first place, that woman is ugly -- that's
why she wears lipstick. If she had beautiful lips, who would bother to paint those
beautiful lips with something tasteless, ugly? -- ugly in the sense that your lips are no
longer part of your face. They stand out, they become separate; they are no longer an
organic unity.

I would like women to have red lips, but those red lips should come through the inner
health -- through blood circulating within your body, through exercise, through breathing;
through long walks, through sunbaths, lips should become red. It is beautiful to have red
lips, but to pretend...! And for whom are you trying to pretend? Everybody can see the
lipstick is there. The lipstick does not hide your lips, it simply reveals that something
ugly is hidden behind it. And I am not saying that all that is not natural is bad. Nature
CAN be improved upon. That's what intelligence is for, but it should not be against
nature. For example, the lips can be red through better food, through better exercise,
through better medicine. That too is improving upon nature, but improving upon nature in
a natural way.

Putting on lipstick is cheap; it is not really improving. It is good for the stage. Makeup
artists are needed for the stage, not for real life. On the stage it is good, because the
people who are looking at you are far away from you; they don't have to kiss you. They
can throw kisses from far away; that's perfectly okay. But they don't have to taste your
lipstick. Layers and layers of lipstick! It is so rotten and old, and continuously your saliva
is giving it all kinds of germs. In each single kiss at least one hundred thousand germs
pass between the lovers. And that is when the lips are without lipstick. With lipstick
nobody has yet counted what is being transferred. And when the lipstick is there you
never come in contact with the lips.

You must have misunderstood me. I am not saying that improving upon nature is bad. I
am not saying that. Women can shave their legs and underarms. It is good, it is hygenic;
nothing is wrong in it. Unless you take every care to clean your body....

Sobel, your New York women must not be taking baths every day it seems. If you take a
bath every day and clean your body, then the hairs under your arms are not bad. There is
nothing wrong about it. There is no need to remove them, they have their place. But if
you are not taking a bath and if you are not being hygenic and clean, then certainly they
will collect dust and they will collect perspiration and they will stink. Then it is good to
remove them. I am not against removing them. It is beautiful to shave the hairs on your
legs and give your legs a beautiful shape.

Improve upon nature, rather than impose. Make people more aware of their beauty and
how to take care of it. Help them in natural ways. Man is the only animal who can go
beyond nature, but he should go through nature, not cover nature. So I am not saying that
that which is not natural is necessarily ugly.
But you must have misunderstood me. You must have heard with your freelance makeup
artist's mind.

One Negro from South Africa was sent by his family to study at the university. So he
went to the director to ask for admission.
"Which branch would you like to take?" asked the director.
"Can't I have a desk like everybody else?"

Now the poor fellow is coming from Africa. His mind can understand only in his own
way...!
Sex was a big problem on the American nuclear submarine which was at sea for months
at a stretch. The captain, however, had solved the problem by buying a lifesize rubber
doll which he put to frequent use. In fact, he became so satisfied that his crew became
suspicious of his good moods and soon discovered the reason.

When the captain was on the bridge, they began to sneak into his cabin to visit the doll.
A few months later, when the submarine returned to San Francisco, the captain went
along to the shop where he had originally purchased the doll.
"Look," he said, "I want to congratulate you guys on the lifelike qualities of that doll I
bought. You know, it is so good I even got syphilis."

Be natural. Try to improve upon it.

It is good in films, on the stage and in theater to have makeup, because people are simply
looking at you -- and from a distance. You can deceive them. But when you are living
with a person, in love, as a wife, as a husband, as a son, as a father, as a mother -- how
can you go on deceiving? The truth will be known -- your false breasts will be
discovered!

You can deceive others, but how can you deceive people who are close to you? And is it
right to deceive them? And if they love you because of your breasts, the moment they
discover that the breasts are false -- plastic or rubber -- will their love remain? It will
disappear. The whole of humanity has become false. The idea seems to be to deceive, to
pretend.

I am not against your art, Sobel, but it has its own place. Life is not its place; life should
be lived naturally. Yes, if some woman is so ugly, or some man is so ugly that he is
disgusting, help him. Then your art can be helpful, because to be disgusting is immoral.
When a woman passes by and you feel like vomiting, then certainly Philip Sobel is
needed, just to protect people from falling sick!

He has written a letter to me in which he says that he is not turned on by any sannyasin,
although they are so beautiful. But he was turned on by an Indian woman in the Blue
Diamond Hotel who was wearing lipstick and everything that he would like everyone
else to wear.

Come, Come, YEt again come, Osho

heartbeatsalute

02-05-2012, 11:27 PM

Vedanta: Seven steps to Samadhi

Somebody has asked a question:

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHY DON'T YOU CARRY ON YOUR CAMPS AT LEAST FOR THREE MONTHS, OR SIX MONTHS?

Because of this... because if I keep a camp continuing for three months you will reach Everest and then back home you will simply go mad with misery. And you will have to go back -- and if it is difficult after nine days it will be impossible after three months. This is good, and part of the training, that you accept both the peak and the valley. Go home and accept the valley also.

The real thing is to learn acceptance. And if you accept the valley then the valley is also very mysterious and beautiful. It has its own splendor. Even anguish has its own beauty if you accept it, even sadness has its own depth. Not only laughter is beautiful; sadness has its own beauty, a depth which no laughter can carry. Sadness has its own poetry, its own rhythm. If you allow me the expression, sadness has its own ecstasy. But one has to accept, only then one will be able to know.

The light is good, but darkness has its own mystery. You may be afraid but that is because of you, not because of darkness. Darkness has its own silence, its own silky expanse, its own infinity. This choice is yours -- that you go on saying that light is good. And every book, the Koran and the Gita and The Bible, goes on making parallels between God and light. They go on saying, "God is light."

This is because man is afraid of darkness. Otherwise darkness is more godly than any light because light is always limited, darkness is always unlimited. Light has to be produced, darkness is there eternally, there is no need to produce it. You can bring light in, you cannot bring darkness in. Simply put off the light and you find that the darkness was already there, there is no need to bring it. It is always there, the eternal and always infinite.

Light has a tension with it, that's why you cannot sleep in light. It is difficult to sleep because a tension continues on the mind. Darkness has a relaxation. Darkness absorbs you, it takes you in its womb and relaxes you. Darkness is like death. But we are afraid of death so we are afraid of darkness. No one says that God is darkness. This is because of our mind. But I tell you, God is both. And unless God becomes both to you, you will never enter him.

Don't choose. Accept without any choice. Be choiceless and accepting. Whatsoever falls upon you, accept it and feel grateful for it. Try this -- you have tried everything else. When misery comes to you thank God, feel happy that misery has befallen you and now you can experience it. Don't be scared. Try to experience what misery is and you will start enjoying it. You will start feeling new dimensions in it, new depths of which you were never aware.

This is why comedies in literature are never as deep as tragedies. And a person who has not known misery remains always shallow -- always shallow. He may be laughing, smiling, but his laugh and smile are always shallow, just on the surface. He has no depth. A person who has passed through miseries, many miseries, gains depth. He knows both the heaven and the hell. And a person who knows both really becomes integrated.

Nietzsche has written many beautiful things, fragments of course. One of the most beautiful things he has ever asserted is that if you want to reach heaven, if you want to touch heaven, your roots must go to hell. It is just as if a big tree arises on the earth: the higher it reaches into the sky, the lower it has to penetrate in the earth. The highest tree must have the deepest roots. And it is proportionate, always the same: if the tree is twenty feet high the roots reach twenty feet down, if the tree is one hundred feet high the roots reach one hundred feet down. A man who really wants to reach a peak of bliss must send his roots deep into sadness, anguish, misery, and the proportion will always be the same.

If you accept both you transcend. Then neither misery can make you miserable nor happiness can make you happy -- you remain the same. Misery comes and goes, happiness comes and goes, you remain untouched. Just like day comes and night comes, and they go on moving in a circle and you remain untouched, life comes and death comes and you remain untouched. Until this is achieved your bliss is just a deception. The bliss that exists against misery is no bliss. Only that bliss is called bliss, ananda, which doesn't exist against misery, which transcends happiness, unhappiness, both.

So when the peak has gone and the valley has come, accept it. It will be difficult, but try. Accept it, feel it, be sensitive to it. Allow it to happen and you are changing its quality, and you are changing yourself also through it. And don't divide, don't say happiness, unhappiness; these are two aspects of the same coin. Accept both or reject both; only then tranquility, calmness, peace, become possible.

VEDANTA: SEVEN STEPS TO SAMADHI, OSHO

heartbeatsalute

02-05-2012, 11:38 PM

http://www.satrakshita.com/osho_on_depression.htm

Osho on Depression

http://www.satrakshita.com/images/WorldTour59.jpg

osho

Remember this: Whenever you are depressed, wait for the moment that the depression goes. Nothing lasts forever; the depression will go. And when it leaves you, wait – be aware and alert – because after the depression, after the night, there will be a dawn and the sun will rise. If you can be alert in that moment. you will he happy that you were depressed. You will be grateful that you are depressed because only through your depression was this mint of happiness possible

But what do we do? We move in an infinite regression We get depressed.

Then we get depressed because of the depression: a second depression follows. If you are depressed. that′s okay! – nothing is wrong in it. It is beautiful because through it you will learn and mature. But then you feel badly. "Why do I get depressed? I should not get depressed." Then you start fighting with the depression. The first depression is good, but the second depression is unreal. And this unreal depression will cloud your mind. You will miss the moment that would have followed the real depression.

When depressed, be depressed. Simply be depressed. Don′t get depressed about your depression. When depressed, simply be depressed. Don′t fight it, don′t create any diversion, don′t force it to go. Just allow it to happen; it will go by itself. Life is a flux; nothing remains the same. You are not needed; the river moves by itself, you don′t have to push it. If you are trying to push it, you are simply foolish. The river flows by itself. Allow it to flow.

When depression is there, allow it to be. Don′t get depressed about it. If you want to remove it sooner, you will get depressed. If you fight it, you will create a secondary depression that is dangerous. The first depression is beautiful, God-given. The second depression is your own. It is not God-given; it is mental. Then you will move in mental grooves. They are infinite.

If you get depressed, be happy that you are depressed and allow the depression to be. Then suddenly the depression will disappear and there will be a breakthrough. No clouds will be there and the sky will be clear. For a single moment, heaven opens for you. If you are not depressed about your depression you can contact, you can commune, you can enter this heavenly gate. And once you know it, you have learned one of the ultimate laws of life: that life uses the opposite as a teacher, as a back-ground.

(Osho - The New Alchemy: To Turn You On #8, The Silence That Follows the Storm)

Osho on Depression (.pdf file)

lonestar

03-05-2012, 12:51 AM

let me share with you where im at right now with my meditation.

1. i start with breathing through my nose while walking or sitting.

2. maybe even doing some osho um if i need that to help calm me down.

3. next i rub my hands together fast and at the same time try to think im my mind what im grateful for in life.

4.now im full of energy and then i try to both feel and see the energy while at the same time working on my breathing.

im catching some gaps.:D

lonestar

03-05-2012, 05:14 AM

imagine that. :D

Osho was not the only person to awaken but i really resonate with him. he was a freak. not in a bad way, but a freak with his awakened skills.

I’ve been back for a full two days now from the Vipassana Meditation retreat, and I’ve been taking some time to reflect on my overall experience. I’ve come to the conclusion that it was incredible.

I didn’t realize this when the course had completed because there was so much information floating around in my head, but now that most of that has quieted down I can view the experience objectively. This post may be a bit long because it’s meant to serve as a review of the course. Please bear with me!

Some Background Information

Not only did I learn a wonderful technique over the course of 10 days. I learned Dhamma, the art of living, as taught by the Buddha. Although Vipassana is a technique developed by the Buddha, it is completely non-sectarian, non-religious, and universal. Anyone can utilize the practical application of the technique, and anyone can expect to obtain the same universal benefits.

At my course there was an array of blacks, whites, asians, indians, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, etc. The purpose of Vipassana is to transmit experiential knowledge of Truth by giving you the opportunity to directly experience Truth within the framework of your body. As you can imagine, this is powerful stuff that can change lives.

The course is taught with a series of audio and video cassette tapes of S.N. Goenka, the primary teacher of the materials. Along with Goenka, there is one male and one female assistant teacher assigned to the course. They are there to clarify any confusion students may have, and to guide the progress of the course.

Arrival

When I first arrived at the course, I was nervous and didn’t know what to expect. Were the people going to be friendly, loving, and compassionate as I expected them to be? Was it going to be a cult-like gathering with a bunch of people wearing loin cloths and sporting thick unkempt beards?

I was pleasantly surprised when I walked into a registration room full of normal looking people, and was greeted by a nice lady. I filled out a “New Student Form,” was given a room number, and was asked to go and settle into my room. This is also when I gave the lady all of my valuable personal belongings, such as my phone, wallet, and car keys (so I couldn’t escape later).

I proceeded to my room, and there was already a gathering of students in the hallway. I got a chance to meet most of them, and I noticed that these weren’t ordinary people. These were exceptional people. They were very open minded, and many of them had done some really cool things (running marathons, traveling the world, attending personal development seminars, etc). I was savoring my right to talk, because this was the last talking I would be doing for the next 10 days.

After our hour long chat session, we made our way to the male dining hall where the course orientation was being held. At the orientation we were told the rules of the facility, and the rules of the program in general. There were certain course boundaries we were not supposed to cross for our own protection (this place was in the middle of nowhere and there was known to be dangerous wildlife abound). Also, there were male and female boundaries to prevent us from interacting with the opposite sex. This made sense because that sort of interaction would create a huge distraction in our meditation efforts. At this time we were also informed of the daily timetable, and were told that if we wanted to get the maximum benefit out of the course we were to adhere to the timetable strictly.

Daily Timetable

Wake up bell: 4:00am

Meditate in the hall or in your room: 4:30-6:30am

Breakfast and rest: 6:30-8:00am

Group meditation in the hall: 8:00-9:00am

Meditate in the hall or in your room: 9:00-11:00am

Lunch and rest: 11:00am-1:00pm

Meditate in the hall or in your room: 1:00-2:30pm

Group meditation in the hall: 2:30-3:30pm

Meditate in the hall or in your room: 3:30-5:00pm

Tea break: 5:00-6:00pm

Group meditation in the hall: 6:00-7:00pm

Evening discourse: 7:00-8:15pm

Final group meditation: 8:15-9:00pm

Lights out: 9:30pm

As you can see, there’s a TON of meditation and not much time for anything else. I was already aware of the schedule before arriving, so I wasn’t surprised. But some of the other students had a look of “what the hell have I gotten myself into?” on their face. After all of the instructions were given, we made our way to the meditation hall, and as soon as we stepped inside, the silence for the course began.

Meditation instructions were given at this first meditation. I remember sitting and thinking, “easy enough!” Since the orientation took up so much time, our evening meditation only lasted for about 30 minutes. After this we were dismissed and had 30 minutes to get ready for bed. I wasn’t used to going to bed at 9:30, so I didn’t fall asleep until about midnight. Almost as soon as I fell asleep, I was abruptly woken up by the morning bell at 4:00am. I thought to myself, “oh %&#$, this is going to be terrible!”

My Daily Experience

The first day was extremely intense. No one is used to meditating for 11 hours a day (unless you’re a monk, then it’s a breeze), so my body was constantly having to make adjustments. My body wasn’t too happy with the adjustments it was having to make, so it gave me a hard time. As the days passed it became more cooperative, and I was able to obtain some incredible results by the end of the course.

I followed the daily timetable scrupulously, observed all of the rules to the tee, and made full use of the theoretical information transmitted in the daily evening discourse. If you plan on attending the course, make sure you do the same so you can obtain the best results possible in the short 10 day period.

The only time I broke silence was to talk with an assistant teacher. At noon, students are allowed to set up an interview, and are permitted to quietly ask the teacher any questions they have about the teachings. This was highly beneficial for me because there were many theoretical aspects of the technique I didn’t understand that I wanted to get clear on. The teacher was quite knowledgeable, as he had been practicing Vipassana for 35 years! I found that understanding why everything works the way it does helped me obtain better results from the practical application of the technique. In the end I realized how wonderful the system really is.

The Verdict

I won’t go into details about the technique because I’m nowhere near qualified enough to teach it, and I don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. I will, however, comment on the quality of the teaching and the effectiveness of the program design.

Over the years, hundreds of thousands of people have attended a Vipassana meditation camp, just like me. And over those years the people who designed the program have constantly worked to perfect it so that students can obtain even better results. My experience was nearly flawless, and everything I was told I would obtain by the end of the course I obtained.

I have to give the Vipassana Academy credit for creating such a fine tuned, effective method to alleviate the human race of its pains and miseries. I can confidently say that every student who signs up for a 10 day program will obtain tangible results at the end of the course if they give the technique a fair trial by observing all the rules and recommendations.

Here are some of the benefits I received by attending the course:

Freedom from pain and misery, and the ability to prevent myself from causing any future pain or misery in my life
The ability to maintain a balanced mind in ANY situation, regardless of how great or how bad it may be
Strong compassion for my fellow beings, human or otherwise. So much so that I’m now a vegetarian (and I was a hardcore meat eater before the course began)
Stopped drinking alcohol
The ability to apply an intense focus to any task I wish to accomplish
The discipline to follow through with any task I wish to accomplish
A better understanding of Truth as it applies to the nature of our reality, and the nature of our being
The confidence one gains when he/she accomplishes something momentous (it feels like I just finished climbing Everest)

In the short period of 10 days I somehow managed to acquire all of these benefits, and many of the other students were able to say the same (I know because I talked to them after the course.) I strongly recommend that everyone take a course because I know it will be life-changing for any individual.

If you do decide to go, make the commitment to yourself to stay for the entire 10 days no matter what. A few students left in the middle of the course, and I’m sure they all regret it now. If you ever find yourself questioning some of the practices during the middle of the course, be patient. I assure you by the end you will understand exactly why everything is set up the way it is.

All in all, I can’t recommend the course strongly enough. I believe every human being should give it a try and see for himself/herself how much this technique can improve his/her life. If you’re closed minded to the idea of taking a chance with a 10 day course, remember, it’s only 10 days. After that you’re back to your normal life, but with a new experience under your belt.

Also, Vipassana meditation is non-sectarian, non-religious, and universal. No one will try to convert you, and you won’t be subjected to any sort of sequestration or indoctrination. With that in mind, give it a try! See for yourself what all the buzz is about. I assure you in the end you’ll be glad you gave Vipassana a chance.

If you have any specific questions at all regarding the course, don’t hesitate to contact me or post a comment below. Also, if you’re interested in learning more about the course, please check out http://www.dhamma.org[/B]

http://comps.fotosearch.com/comp/PHT/PHT625/india-rickshaw_~FAAAGZ000037.jpg
Indian Rickshaw

http://www.dharmawheel.net/images/smilies/namaste.gif

heartbeatsalute

03-05-2012, 05:11 PM

Possessive Love Is Destructive

“The possessive love is a contradiction in terms because possessiveness means you are reducing the other person into a thing. Only things can be possessed, not persons. Only things can be owned, not persons.

"The person’s essential quality that differentiates him from things is his freedom; and possession, ownership, destroys freedom. So on the one hand you think you are loving a person; on the other hand, you are destroying his very essence.”---OSHO

heartbeatsalute

03-05-2012, 05:47 PM

http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/michaeljung/michaeljung0812/michaeljung081200625/3957845-beautiful-indian-woman-walking-in-garden.jpg
Indian woman with sari

ANSWER: IT IS THE MIND OF SHRAVAKA, BUDDHA’S ACTUAL DISCIPLE
.
QUESTION: WHAT DO YOU CALL THE MIND OF NO-ENTITY?

ANSWER: IT IS THE MIND OF THE SAGES WHO HAVE NO CONNECTION WITH THE
TEACHING OF BUDDHA, BUT DISCOVER THE TRUTH OF NO-ENTITY BY THEMSELVES.

QUESTION: WHAT DO YOU CALL THE MIND WHICH HAS NO PARTICULAR UNDERSTANDING,

AND ALSO NO PAINFUL DELUSIONS?

ANSWER: IT IS THE MIND OF BODHISATTVAS.

QUESTION: WHAT DO YOU CALL THE MIND WHICH HAS NOTHING TO KNOW AND ALSO

NOTHING TO REALIZE?

ANSWER: NO ANSWER FROM BODHIDHARMA.

BODHIDHARMA SAID, ”DHARMAKAYA HAS NO FORM, THEREFORE ONE SEES IT WITHOUT
SEEING.

PRAJNA HAS NOTHING TO BE KNOWN, THEREFORE ONE KNOWS IT WITHOUT KNOWING.

IF HE THINKS THAT HE IS SEEING, HE SEES IT INCOMPLETELY. IF HE THINKS THAT
HE KNOWS IT, HE DOES NOT KNOW IT THOROUGHLY. WHEN HE KNOWS IT WITHOUT
KNOWING, HE KNOWS IT COMPLETELY. IF ONE DOES NOT KNOW THIS, HE IS NOT A TRUE
KNOWER. IF ONE THINKS THAT HE IS GAINING, HE IS NOT GAINING ENTIRELY. WHEN
HE GAINS NONGAINING, HE OWNS EVERYTHING. IF ONE THINKS THAT HE IS RIGHT, HIS
RIGHTEOUSNESS IS NOT PERFECT. WHEN HE TRANSCENDS RIGHT AND WRONG, HIS
VIRTUES ARE ACCOMPLISHED. SUCH WISDOM IS THE GATE-OPENER TO A HUNDRED
THOUSAND GATES OF THE HIGHER WISDOM.”

SAID BODHIDHARMA, ”ALL BUDDHAS PREACH EMPTINESS. WHY? BECAUSE THEY WISH
TO CRUSH THE CONCRETE IDEAS OF THE STUDENTS. IF A STUDENT EVEN CLINGS TO
AN IDEA OF EMPTINESS, HE BETRAYS ALL BUDDHAS. ONE CLINGS TO LIFE ALTHOUGH
THERE IS NOTHING TO BE CALLED LIFE; ANOTHER CLINGS TO DEATH ALTHOUGH THERE
IS NOTHING TO BE CALLED DEATH. IN REALITY THERE IS NOTHING TO BE BORN,

CONSEQUENTLY THERE IS NOTHING TO PERISH.

”BY CLINGING ONE RECOGNIZES A THING OR AN IDEA. REALITY HAS NEITHER INSIDE,
OUTSIDE, NOR MIDDLE PART. AN IGNORANT PERSON CREATES DELUSIONS AND SUFFERS
FROM DISCRIMINATION. RIGHT AND WRONG DO NOT EXIST IN REALITY. AN IGNORANT
PERSON CREATES THEM, RECOGNIZES THEM, NEAR OR FAR, INWARD OR OUTWARD. HE
THEN SUFFERS FROM DISCRIMINATION. THIS IS THE GENERALWAY OF THE PHENOMENAL
WORLD.”

All questions are childish. Mind you, they are not childlike, they are childish, they are stupid. They
may appear very knowledgeable, they may consist of great words, but they have no significance,
no meaning, because those great words are empty, borrowed. They have no roots in your own
existential experience.

Philosophy as such is a very childish affair. Religion has maturity, but not philosophy. Philosophy
is curiosity – curiosity without any worthiness to know – questions raised in the hope of getting
answers. But even if answers are given you will not be able to receive them, because there is no
readiness on your part to receive them. The answers will only create new questions in the childish
mind.

That has been the whole history of philosophical endeavor. For ten thousand years philosophy has
raised great questions and has been greatly involved in finding answers, but not a single answer
has been found. No effort has been as futile as philosophy. Each answer that philosophers think
they have arrived at, that they think is going to change the whole vision of man, simply creates more
questions. Philosophy has not solved anything at all. It cannot: it is basically a movement in the
wrong direction.

Mind can only raise questions, but cannot find the answers. Just as leaves grow on trees, questions
grow in the mind. You can prune the leaves but by pruning more leaves will come, the foliage will
become thicker. You can prune the questions – that’s what philosophy goes on doing – but more
questions will arise because the source of the questions, the mind, remains intact, protected, secure.

To find the answer one has to go beyond the mind, and to go beyond the mind is the only maturity.

You are really a grownup person when you have gone beyond the mind. The buddhas are nothing
but grownup people, mature, ripe, integrated, who have gone beyond the mind, gone to the other
shore, the further shore. At that height questions simply disappear. Not that they are solved,
remember it, questions are not solved when you go beyond mind; going beyond mind you are going
beyond questions too. They become irrelevant, they look stupid, they lose all meaning: they are
simply nonsense. Not that you find answers but when questions dissolve and you are in a state of
questionless consciousness, this is THE answer. Without any particular answer this is the answer,
this is the solution.

Hence we in the East call it samadhi; samadhi simply means the solution. All is solved, questions
are dissolved. You are absolutely silent, with no curiosity, with nothing to ask. When you have
nothing to ask, you know; and when you have something to ask, you do not know. Yes, out of
compassion buddhas go on answering your questions in the hope that sooner or later you will see
the utter absurdity, ridiculousness of questions.

Existence simply is. It is not a question/answer thing, it is not a puzzle; it is a mystery to be
experienced, lived, loved. You can sing it, you can dance it; but it is not a question, it is a quest, an
adventure, an ecstatic adventure, an exploration. And when you enter into the mysterious without
any curiosity, all the secrets of existence are available to you.

If you enter with a curious mind, nothing is available to you, because the curious mind itself prevents
you from seeing. You are preoccupied with your question. You are preoccupied with your knowledge.
You ask because you think you know. Somebody comes and says, ”Who created the world?” In fact
he already carries the idea that God created the world, he has come to ask only to be confirmed.
If you confirm it, he is very happy; if you negate it, he becomes angry at you. He was not a real
seeker, he was seeking support for his belief.

One day early in the morning when Buddha was out for his morning walk, a man asked him, ”Is
there a God?”

Buddha looked for a moment into the eyes of the man and said, ”No. There is no God at all – never
has been, never will be. You get rid of all this nonsense.”
The man was shocked.

Ananda was following Buddha. He always followed him like a shadow, just to be at his service if at
any moment, any need arose. He listened – he had listened to many answers from Buddha – and
it was like a hammer, so crude, so cruel it looked. But he saw the face of Buddha – tremendous
compassion.

In the afternoon of the same day another man came and he asked, ”Is there a God?”
Buddha said, ”Yes, there is – always has been, always will be. Seek and find.”
Ananda was very much puzzled; he had not forgotten the answer that Buddha gave just that
morning, but he could not ask because there were so many other people there.

And before he could ask, another man came by that evening just as the sun was setting. And
Buddha was sitting outside underneath a tree, just watching the sunset and the beautiful clouds,
and the man asked, ”Is there a God?”

Buddha simply motioned his hand, made a gesture to the man to sit down, and himself closed his
eyes. The man followed. They sat in silence for a few moments, then the man rose up. It was getting
dark, the sun had set. He touched the feet of Buddha, said, ”I am grateful for the answer. Thank you
very much,” and went away.

Now Ananda was all boiling up. When there was nobody there, Ananda asked, ”I will not be able to
sleep tonight unless you answer me. In a single day, the same question – and you answer in three
ways. To the first person you said ’No, there is no God.’ To the second you said, ’Yes, there is.’ And
to the third you simply motioned with such love for him to sit down and close his eyes. You didn’t
say anything to him, but something must have transpired, because the man fell into deep silence,
he touched your feet, he thanked you also for your answer, although I was there and you had not
answered at all. What is going on? You have puzzled me very much.”

Buddha said, ”No answer was given to you. Why should you be puzzled? It was their question, it
was my answer, you were not a party to it.”

But Ananda said, ”I am not deaf, I was there and I simply listened. And now those three answers
are keeping me very much confused.”

Buddha said, ”The first man was a believer, he believed in God. He had not really come to inquire,
he had come to be confirmed. He wanted his belief to be supported by me, so that he could go
and tell people, ’Not only I believe in God, Buddha also believes.’ He wanted to use me for his own
purposes, hence I had to say no. And I had to be very hard with him, otherwise he was so full of
his own ideas he would not have listened. He was a scholar, well acquainted with the scriptures – I
could hear the noise in his head, I could see the turmoil in his being. I had to be very cruel and hard
like a hammer, because only then there was a possibility that he might hear. He needed a shock. I
shocked him, because I don’t want to support anybody’s beliefs. All beliefs are wrong. Knowing is a
totally different matter.

”And the second man was an atheist, he did not believe in God. He was also a scholar, he was also
full of all kinds of ideas, but he was just the opposite to the first man. He had also come for the same
purpose. They were opposites, enemies, but the purpose was the same. He wanted me to support
his non-belief, his disbelief. That’s why I had to say to him with such authority: ’Yes, there is a God
– only God is, and nothing else.’ That way I shattered his belief.

”And the third man was really a seeker. He did not want an answer, he wanted an experience. He
had not come to question – he had no idea, no prejudice – he had come open, available. He was
vulnerable to me, he was a man of great trust. He wanted me to reveal something to him, hence I did
not answer him, I simply told him to sit by my side. And, yes, you are right, something transpired....”
... Because something always transpires when two persons can manage to sit in deep silence. And
if you can manage to sit in deep silence with a buddha, something of tremendous value is going
to happen. His silence is contagious. If you are available and open his silence will pour into your
being. It will be like a bath; you will be bathed in his consciousness. You will be cleansed, you will
be purified. Your dust will disappear from your mirror. Suddenly you will be able to see; your eyes
will be clear.

”... So without giving him any answer, he received the answer. He received the answer of all answers
which is silence. That’s why he was so grateful, that’s why he bowed down ’and touched my feet,
that’s why he thanked me.”

When you come to a Buddha or a Bodhidharma you have to be very alert how you come. Don’t
come with prejudices, otherwise you will ask childish questions.
A little boy went to school for the first time and the teacher explained that if he wanted to go to the
washroom he should raise two fingers.

The boy, looking puzzled, asked, ”How’s that going to stop it?”
He has a certain childish idea, but he is puzzled.

”Why don’t you smile?” the teacher asked young Johnny.
”I didn’t have no breakfast,” Johnny replied.

”You poor dear,” said the teacher. ”But to return to our geography lesson, Johnny. Where is the
Polish border?”

”In bed with Momma – that’s why I didn’t have no breakfast.”
It is not only children who are full of childish ideas, the so-called grownups are not different at all. Yes,
they are aged, but not grown up. They have been growing in age but not growing in consciousness.
The more you grow in age the more ideas you accumulate – obviously: more experiences, more
words, more theories, more ideologies.

The more you grow in consciousness, the less ideas, the less philosophy, the less theologies.
Silence grows in you instead. Beware of being knowledgeable; that is the greatest hindrance
between you and the truth. Knowledgeability deceives you, it makes you feel that you already
know. That’s how thousands of pundits, scholars, professors, pedagogues go on living. Believing
that they know, they know nothing. They have not entered the temple of wisdom – they have not
even MOVED towards the temple. In fact, they are moving in just the opposite direction. To know
is one thing, and to be knowledgeable is just the opposite of it. Beware of knowledgeability so that
one day you can know.

It is not a question of accumulating information; on the contrary, it is a question of emptying your
mind totally of all its content. When the mind is empty, has nothing to say, has nothing to believe,
has no ideas about anything, then suddenly the reality is revealed to you. In that emptiness, you
become a mirror. To be empty is to be a mirror. And then, simply, all that is, is reflected in you.
The first question.... All these questions are stupid, but Bodhidharma is very patient. Knowing that
they are stupid, he answers – not in the hope that they will be answered in this way but in the hope
that you will one day understand that life is not a matter of questioning and answering. His answers
are such that they don’t answer your question, they DESTROY your question.

That’s the way of the real master: he does not answer your question, he simply destroys it. So if
you are waiting for a particular answer, you will be at a loss. Many have come from the buddhas
empty-handed just because they were expecting ready-made, particular answers. Buddhas don’t
do that. On the contrary, they take away your question.

These answers are just to take the questions away from you, so that you can be left more clean,
more spacious. These questions are like clouds in the sky. Once these clouds disappear, the infinity
of the sky becomes available to you with all its beauty and glory and grandeur.

The first question: WHAT DO YOU CALL THE MIND OF GREEDINESS?

On the surface the question looks perfectly okay, but if you watch carefully, the questioner himself
is greedy. He is asking questions: Bodhidharma answers one; he has not even answered it and
another question pops up. And the other question that pops up is nothing but a new formulation of
the old question.

It is not that there is a ’mind of greediness’; mind IS greed. Greed and mind are not two things,
greed is the nature of mind. Mind is greedy because it wants to accumulate more and more. It may
be money, it may be power, it may be knowledge, it may be good deeds, virtue, but whatsoever it
is, mind is greed. It wants to accumulate more and more, it is afraid of being empty, because in
emptiness mind disappears, evaporates. Only when you are cluttered with unnecessary furniture....
Just the other day I was looking at a photographic record of Sigmund Freud’s house. It really is
something worth going into. The whole house seems to be so cluttered with things that one wonders
how Sigmund Freud managed to live in it. There is no space at all. Even in his study there are at
least a hundred statues, small and big; it looks like a museum. Things and things all over the place.
One should be very very careful and cautious about moving in his room, otherwise something will
fall; you will stumble upon something. To live in such a room is indicative of his mind – the mind
of greed. No space in the room indicates his inner state, there is no space there either. Sigmund
Freud is a very knowledgeable person.

Going through that book, I became more and more sorry for the poor man. What kind of life must he
have lived? It must have been a long long nightmare. Whatsoever must have been presented to him
– necessary, unnecessary – he accumulated. At least one’s study should be spacious – his looks
like a shop. He is sitting in his chair and on his table there are fifty statues, and he is reading there.
So many things to distract him! And on the walls, pictures and calendars – all the walls are covered.
And so many tables and chairs! He was living as if afraid of emptiness. He was very afraid of death.
It is said that even to mention the word death was enough for him to be shocked. Twice or thrice
hc fainted because somebody started talking about death; actually fainted, fell from the chair to the
ground. So afraid of death? That simply means he must have been afraid of emptiness too, because
death and emptiness are the same.

Why do you accumulate so many things, why do you accumulate so many ideas? Just to go on
feeling that you are full. People eat too much just to feel full, people are constantly moving from one
crowd to another crowd. People are members of religions – that is, members of crowds – members
of clubs, members of political parties.... A person is a Rotarian, and he is Christian or a Hindu, and
he also belongs to this political party or that: he goes on moving from one crowd to another crowd,
he keeps himself occupied, so that he never becomes aware of the inner emptiness.

Inner emptiness seems to be like falling into the abyss, bottomless abyss. So people go filling
themselves with anything; that is greed. Greed has nothing to do with money as such, anything that
you go on filling yourself with is greed. And there is no ’mind of greediness’; mind IS greediness.
Berkowitz met a beautiful brunette in Bermuda and tried to get her to fly home with him to New York.
”Come with me tonight and I’ll buy you a mink coat,” propositioned Berkowitz.

”I’ve got two minks hanging in my closet.”
”A Buick convertible?”
”And what would I do with my Cadillac?”
”All right, I’ll give you a stunning diamond bracelet.”
She displayed the gems on her wrist: ”Already have one. However, I’d be willing to consider a
sizeable chunk of cash.”
”Sorry,” said Berkowitz, ”that’s the one thing I can’t get wholesale!”

All minds are Jewish, remember; to be a Jew has nothing to do with a race. There are only two
types of people in the world: Jews and buddhas. Whosoever is greedy is a Jew. It is a quality –
nothing to do with blood.

A young woman was married to an old man. The husband caught a cold which developed into
pneumonia. He was immediately rushed to a hospital and placed in an oxygen tent. Knowing that
the odds were against his pulling through, he summoned his wife to his side and said, ”The will is
in order. The stocks and bonds and securities are in the safety vault. But here is something no one
else knows. There is a safe hidden in the corner of the attic, with two hundred thousand dollars in
cash. The key is taped at the bottom of my dresser drawer. Gloria dear! Why are you squeezing the
oxygen tube?”

People are ready to kill, people are ready to be killed for greed. What are these people: Genghis
Khan, Tamburlaine, Alexander, Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong? What are these
people? Greed multiplied, greed gone mad. The whole effort is: how to forget the inner emptiness.
And you cannot destroy inner emptiness; it is your very being. You can cover it with things, but
sooner or later you will have to encounter it. And it is better if you encounter it sooner. Death will
reveal it to you, but then it will be too late – you may not be able to do anything. Death is bound to
reveal it to you. All your accumulations will be of no help. Death will make you clearly aware that
your hands are empty – not only your hands, your BEING is also empty. Death is a shock because
it reveals your emptiness and destroys your illusions of being full.

The meditator comes upon this experience before death. That is the beginning of a transformation.
You start knowing your emptiness, and the more you know it the more you are surprised: it is
emptiness only in the sense that there is nothing of the outside world with which you are acquainted.
Yes, in that sense it is empty, but as you go deeper into it, you start feeling that it is also a fullness,
a plenitude. It is empty of the world but full of God. The first experience of it is going to be that it is
empty, and the second experience that it is full of God.

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT FOR ME TO TAKE SANNYAS? EVER SINCE I SAW YOU IN AN
INTERVIEW ON TV ONE YEAR AGO, I’VE NEVER BEEN SO NERVOUS BEFORE IN MY WHOLE
LIFE. SOMETIMES I WISH I’D NEVER HEARD OF YOU, AND, ON THE OTHER HAND, I’M HAPPY
THAT THERE IS SOMEONE LIKE YOU TO SHOW ME THE WAY. BUT TO TAKE SANNYAS...

I FEEL SUCH AN EGOIST – JEALOUS, LAZY – THAT MAYBE I SHALL NEVER BE A GOOD
SANNYASIN. CAN YOU PLEASE GIVE ME A HINT TO FIND A WAY OUT OF THIS DILEMMA?

Rita, sannyas is always difficult. But only the first step, because it is a transformation from one style
of life to a totally different style of life. Mind always finds it difficult to adjust to new ways of life. The
old way you seem to be well-acquainted with; you can walk on it with closed eyes, almost asleep,
like a robot. But the new way will need alertness, awareness; the new way will need learning life
from scratch.

Sannyas is simply an initiation into new spaces within you, a change from the head to the heart,
from logic to love, from your ordinary conditioning, to an unconditioned mind, to a freedom which
you are not even aware that you are capable of.
Sannyas is something like a bird which has remained in a cage – the cage is golden, very artistic,
very valuable, but to the bird it is nothing other than an imprisonment. But the bird has lived long in
the cage, although it is taking away its freedom, its whole sky, its flights across the sun, its joy; it has
almost destroyed the bird’s capacity to be on the wing. Perhaps the bird has already forgotten that it
has wings. But the cage has security, safety from the unknown. The bird need not to be worried for
the coming days – it need not worry about its food.

Even if you open the door of the cage, the bird will hesitate to get out of it. So much is involved –
the security, the safety. And who knows about this vast sky, and where he will land? And he has
forgotten completely that he has wings. You know something only if you use it. If a bird has never
used its wings, how can it remember them?

The English word sin is very beautiful. Christians have destroyed its beauty, they have made it ugly;
otherwise its original root means ”forgetfulness.” There is only one sin, and that is forgetfulness.

The doors are open, the sky is inviting, the other birds are flying, it is only a question of a little
courage. That’s why I say that only the first step is difficult. If the bird can gather courage and take
a jump into the air, the wings that he has no awareness of suddenly open.
He’s on the wing.
The whole sky is his.

Now the faraway stars can be his pilgrimage.

Sannyas is initiation into freedom, making you aware about your wings, making you also aware that
the whole sky, with all its stars is yours. You need not worry about security and safety; existence is
taking care of so many birds, so many trees, so many stars – it can take care of you too.

Sannyas is trust in existence. And the moment you trust, there is no fear, there is no worry, and
there is no difficulty. Life becomes the most enjoyable, relaxed phenomenon.

You are asking, Rita, ”Why is it so difficult for me to take sannyas?” My suggestion is that you
cannot deliberately take sannyas; it is something like love that happens, it is something like sleep
that comes. You cannot make any effort for the sleep to come, nor can you make any effort for love
to happen – these are not part of the world of doings. Your first difficulty is that you are thinking of
taking sannyas. Drop that idea, and sannyas will take you. Suddenly you will realize, ”My God, I am
a sannyasin.”

It simply comes – and it comes so silently, so gracefully. But the idea of taking sannyas is basically
wrong; hence it becomes difficult. Even if you take it, it will be false, it won’t be the true sannyas;
you will be simply dreaming that you have taken sannyas. The authentic sannyas simply comes one
moment and possesses you – it springs up from your very heart, and there is no way to avoid it. It
is your very heartbeat.

So the first thing you have to drop is the idea of taking. Just be here, enjoy for a few days. Just
watch other birds opening their wings in the sky. Participate in their songs, in their dances, without
bothering about sannyas. And if you start feeling that it is already happening, in a moment when
you are lost in singing and dancing, when you are not there... it occupies your innermost being.

It is not something that you have to do, it is something that simply grows in you. It is not a commodity
that you have to purchase, it is a quality, a grace, a search which starts growing inside you – just like
a seed disappears into the soil and in its place a plant starts growing. That plant was asleep in the
seed; now it has awakened.

Sannyas is asleep in you, just asleep. So dance madly, sing madly, meditate, enjoy all these people,
this crazy communion, and the moment will come on its own. When you are ripe you will find that
there is nothing more easy than sannyas.

You are saying, ”Ever since I saw you in an interview on TV one year ago, I’ve never been so nervous
before in my whole life.” It is a good sign. I touched your heart. Your nervousness, that you have
never felt before, is simply an indication that something new has started happening in you. You don’t
know what it is, you don’t know where it is going to lead you; hence the nervousness.

People always feel good walking on the superhighway where the whole crowd of millions of people
are walking. They may be going nowhere, but just because so many people are going, you feel a
certain confidence that so many people cannot be wrong. But my whole teaching is that unless you
start moving alone, dropping the crowd... because the crowd has never reached anywhere, and one
has never heard of a crowd becoming enlightened. A crowd always remains a crowd – blind, deaf,
without direction. It just goes on because it always finds somebody ahead of it is continuing on.

One scientist was trying to experiment in South Africa on a very rare species of insect which always
follows the leader; they always move in a long line. If you pull one out of the line it becomes
nervous, it starts feeling that it has lost its moorings, its roots. Put back in the line it is perfectly
at ease. Somebody is ahead, somebody is behind, they must be going somewhere, and so many
cannot be wrong.

The scientist tried one experiment and captured almost a dozen insects of that species. He put them
into a big plate, a round plate, and they started moving round, and round, and round. Somebody
was always ahead, somebody was always behind, and out of their conditioning of centuries, unless
the leader stops.... And there was no leader because it was a circle. They are very obedient people
– unless the leader stops, nobody is going to stop. They went on and on for sixty hours, until they
all fell dead.

Where is the crowd going?... but it is cozy to be part of it. People are very nervous in being
alone, and sannyas is the art of being aloneness. Unless you learn to be alone, you will never be
an individual in your own right; and unless you learn to be alone you will never be able to enter
within yourself, because the crowd cannot go there. Even your most intimate friend, your lover, your
beloved, cannot go with you inside you; there you have to go alone. That path is absolutely private.

That is your privilege, nobody can interfere there, and that is where your source of life is. You can
call it life, you can call it God, you can call it truth – names don’t matter.

You became nervous – it is a good sign. From that very moment I have been haunting you, and
unless sannyas happens I am going to haunt you your whole life. You can go anywhere, you can
escape to the moon, but it won’t help.

You say, ”Sometimes I wish I’d never heard of you.” Nobody desires disasters, but they happen. And
it has happened already; now there is no point in crying for the spilled milk.
”And, on the other hand,
I’m happy that there is someone like you to show me the way.” You will remain in a dilemma: half of
you is already ready to take the jump, and the other half is clinging to your past.

One thing has to be remembered, that the past is no more, and clinging to the past is clinging to
the dead. It is very dangerous, because it hampers and hinders your life, in the present and for the
future. One should always go on freeing himself of the dead past. That is one of the fundamentals
of sannyas, to go on renewing yourself every moment, to die to the past and be born anew. That
which is gone is gone – don’t even look back. Looking back is not a good sign.

Small children never look back, they always look ahead. They don’t have anything in the past to look
back on – there is no past, they have only the future. Old men never look at the future, because
in the future there is only death, and they want to avoid it, they don’t want to talk about it. They
always look back. They decorate their memories; they make them look very beautiful. All that they
have is a collection of memories, and they go on improving on those memories, but when they were
actually living them, they had not enjoyed them. But now the future is darkness; one needs some
consolation. They can find consolation only in the past.

A person who lives in the present – neither bothering about the past, nor bothering about the future
– is fresh, young; he is neither a child nor an old man. And one can remain young to the very last
breath. The body may be old, but the consciousness remains fresh, just like a fresh breeze, cool,
fragrant, in the early morning sun. The whole problem is that we are caught up with our past. It is
holding us back, it does not allow us to go against it. And if you don’t go against it, your whole life will
be simply boredom, because you will be repeating and repeating the same past, the same routine.

The most important philosophical school of our age is existentialism, and they have brought a few
new problems for the philosophers to think about. One of their problems is boredom. If you look
into an existentialist treatise you will be surprised: God is not talked about at all; there is nobody
concerned about the soul, about heaven and hell, and angels and the devil.

The things that they
are talking about are boredom, anguish, meaninglessness, society – strange subjects, but in fact far
more significant than God, the devil, heaven and hell, because they were all fictions, and these are
realities.

A man who lives according to the past remains in the grip of the past. He is bound to feel boredom,
meaninglessness, and a kind of anguish, ”What am I doing here? Why am I continuing to live?

What is there in tomorrow? – another repetition of today? And what was in today was a repetition of
yesterday.” So what is the point? Why go dragging yourself from the cradle to the grave, in the same
routine?

It is perfectly good for buffaloes and donkeys because they don’t think, they don’t have the memory
of the past, they don’t have any idea of the future. So they are doing the same thing every day, the
buffaloes go on chewing the same grass their whole life; they don’t change even the grass – but
they are not bored, because for boredom a certain consciousness is needed.

This consciousness
is aware that you have done it before, you are doing it again, and you will be doing it tomorrow also
– because you don’t move from the past, you don’t let it die, you keep it alive.

This is the dilemma that everybody faces in life, and the only solution is to let the past die. There is a
beautiful story in the life of Jesus. He comes to a lake; it is early morning, the sun has yet not risen,
and one fisherman is just going to throw his net into the lake to catch fish. Jesus puts his hand on
his shoulder and says, ”How long are you going to do this thing, every day – morning, afternoon,
evening – just catching fish? Do you think this is all life is meant for?”

The fisherman had never thought about it – a simple, poor fellow. He said, ”I have never thought
about it, but because you have raised the question, I can see the point, that life must be something
more.”
Jesus said, ”If you come with me I will teach you how to catch men, rather than catching fish.”

The man looked into Jesus’ eyes... such depth, such sincerity, so much love that you cannot doubt
this man, such a great silence surrounding him that you cannot say no to this man. The fisherman
threw his net into the water and followed Jesus.
As they were getting out of the town a man came running and told the fisherman, ”Where are you
going with this stranger? Your father who was ill for many days has died. Come home!”

The fisherman asked Jesus, ”Just give me three days so that I can do the last rituals which a son is
expected to do when his father dies.”
And this is the statement that I want you to remember: Jesus said to that fisherman, ”Let the dead
bury their dead, you come with me.” What does he mean, ”Let the dead bury their dead, you come
with me.... The whole city is full of dead people; they will manage to dispose of your dead father.
You are not an absolute necessity to them. You just come with me.” People like Jesus have such a
certain authority in their very presence – the fisherman followed him.

Every moment something is becoming dead. Don’t be antique collectors; that which is dead, leave
it. You go with the life, you flow with life, with your totality and intensity, and you will never face any
dilemma, any problem.
Sannyas is such a simple happening, but it is a simple happening only to the intelligent, not to the
retarded. It is not for idiots... at least, I have never seen any idiot even thinking about sannyas.

The idiots belong to the world of the buffaloes. They are perfectly at ease, although their life has
no meaning, no flowers, no fragrance. No song ever arises in their heart; they don’t ever feel like
dancing to abandon. Their life is very lukewarm. It never gets to such an intensity where one
becomes almost a flame – a torch burning from both ends simultaneously. And only these few
people have known the truth of life and the beauty of life and the ecstasy of life.

You are saying, ”But to take sannyas... I feel such an egoist – jealous, lazy – that maybe I shall never
be a good sannyasin.”

Who told you that you have to be a good sannyasin? Here are only sannyasins; nobody is good,
nobody is bad. We don’t believe in those categories. Have you ever seen a deer which is beautiful
or a deer which is ugly? Those categories don’t exist – all deers are simply so alive.... Here nobody
takes note whether you are a good sannyasin or a bad sannyasin. You can be a good Christian or a
bad Christian, a good Hindu or a bad Hindu. But sannyas is not a religion; it is a search.

What do you mean when you say, ”I cannot be a good sannyasin?” To be a sannyasin is to be good!

It is its intrinsic quality. A person who is so courageous to take the jump and come out of the old
bondage into the open sky... this love for freedom and this risk for freedom is what goodness is.

And as far as laziness is concerned, sannyas is exactly the art of how to be spiritually lazy. I call
myself the lazy man’s guide to enlightenment – because I teach nothing but sitting silently, doing
nothing, and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. You don’t have to pull the grass, it
grows by itself; you have just to wait.

Laziness is not a bad quality. I have always been condemned by my elders, by my teachers, by my
professors, by my colleagues, friends, ”You are good for nothing.” And I said, ”That’s actually how I
want to be: good for nothing” – because in this world you cannot find a lazy man becoming Adolf
Hitler or Ronald Reagan or Alexander the Great or Nadir Shah or Tamerlane or Genghis Khan. The
world has suffered from active people, not from lazy people!
If two dozen people in the world would have been lazy, just two dozen more – people like Joseph
Stalin and Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler... just two dozen people in the world, and the world
would have been a paradise, because there would have been no wars. Lazy people cannot fight.

I am reminded of a small story. In India there is one state, Rajasthan, which is the most ancient
place of warriors; it has created great warriors. In a small village there was a great warrior, and in
India, to have your mustache pointing upwards is thought to be the sign of a great warrior. He was
such an arrogant and stubborn fellow that he had told everybody in the town, ”You can have your
mustache, but they should be always pointing downwards. If I see anybody having his mustache
pointing upwards, I will kill him!”

And he had killed at least two, three people. Then the whole village became afraid, ”This is a strange
man; we cannot even keep our mustaches upwards.” But what to do? The man was dangerous and
he was powerful.

And then came a new stranger to live in the village. He was a very lazy man. People told him, ”You
are a stranger, you don’t know the law of this town. The great warrior... if he sees you, your head
will be chopped off. You have to put your mustache downwards.”

He said, ”I am so lazy that I will prefer it ifhe chops off my head. But I am not going to make that
much effort, because it will take hours... for my whole life my mustache has been trained to remain
upwards; to change its direction is not easy. If he chops off my head, that finishes all my anxieties
and problems.”
People said, ”Are you mad or something?”

As he was sitting outside his house, the warrior came and he said, ”It seems you are a stranger in
this town.”
He said, ”That’s right.”
The warrior said, ”Stranger or no stranger, pull down your mustache!”

The lazy man said, ”That is not possible. But if you are going to have a fight with me, then I will
suggest one thing – because one never knows, I may be dead, you may be dead... because it is not
going to be just that you chop off my head; I also have my sword, although I have never used it. But
if that moment has come I will give it a try. There is no harm; anyway I am going to die.

”Before we enter into a fight to kill each other, my suggestion is that I should go inside my house and
kill my wife and my children, because more or less I will be killed, and after me my children will be
orphans, my wife will be a widow, and who will take care of them? And I suggest the same thing to
you: that you go home, kill your wife, kill your children, so if you are killed there is no problem; there
will be nobody left behind you in misery and pain.”

The warrior said, ”The idea is right.” He went back and immediately cut off the heads of his wife and
his six children and came back. Just on the way he met the man. He was coming without the sword
and he had put his mustache downward. The warrior said, ”What happened?”

He said, ”I thought, I am a lazy man, it is more simple to put the mustache down than to kill the wife
and the children. And I have never killed anybody. So I changed my mind.”The warrior said, ”You
idiot! You changed your mind. And I have finished my family!”
He said, ”That is not my responsibility. Just, I had to choose between two things, whichever was
simpler. I thought, putting the mustache down is simpler.”

Basically I am a lazy man. Lazy people have not done any harm in the world. It is the too active, the
hyperactive, who have driven the whole world into misery, madness, slavery. So as far as laziness
is concerned, it is very supportive to meditation because meditation needs a very quiet, calm, silent
mind. A lazy man is so lazy that he cannot even be bothered to think. Thinking is also part of the
active mind.

So, you don’t be worried about your being a good sannyasin, because to be a sannyasin is to be
good. You don’t worry about being lazy – that is a great quality that has to be developed, and you
already have it!

As far as your ego is concerned and your jealousy is concerned, my whole work here is to help you
become so loving that the energy that becomes jealousy is transformed into love. And you know
perfectly well that jealousy always follows your love. You are not jealous without love. A man who
does not love is not jealous.

Jealousy is almost like a shadow of love. If we can grow our love, it takes over the whole energy
of jealousy and transforms it into love. It is an alchemical change. And I can say it with guarantee,
because it has happened in me, it has happened in my thousands of sannyasins who have forgotten
what jealousy is. Their love is so much.

And as your silence, your peacefulness, your relaxedness, your love, deepen, your ego disappears.
Ego is a false entity. One need not be worried about ego. Meditation is the medicine to kill the ego.

So I accept all kinds of people: egoist, jealous, angry, violent, depressed, because I have seen that
a simple meditation transforms all these baser metals into gold. This is the alchemy of sannyas.

So that should not be your worry. Once you are a sannyasin, that has to be my worry – your jealousy,

your ego. I have to take care that they don’t leave you too quickly, because then one starts feeling
a gap. One starts feeling that something is missing. So my whole concern is that before you start
missing your ego, I should provide at least a little glimpse to you of your real individuality, your self.

Then you won’t miss the ego. I have to provide you with a few new flowers in your loving energy, so
that you won’t miss your jealousy.

And these things are not alone – there are many, many things. Ego is surrounded with depression,
with anxiety, with anguish, with all kinds of sick ideas. My problem is that your sick ideas should
not disappear suddenly; otherwise you will start feeling yourself empty. They have been there for so
long, and you have been feeling so full.

Before they disappear I have to give you new experiences, which are not difficult, which are lying
dormant in you. Just a little push and your heart becomes so full of songs that, who cares about
jealousy?

Your own life becomes so graceful that you forget all about somebody else being more beautiful,
somebody else being more intelligent. All your competitiveness, all your jealousies simply disappear;
otherwise, you go on accumulating more and more problems, and when death comes you are
nothing but a huge collection of problems. You don’t have anything to feel grateful for towards
existence. You are angry because this existence has given you only problems and nothing else –
and they go on growing.

It all depends on you, whether you want to grow roses or you want to let any weeds grow in your
being. Ordinarily, people never bother: weeds go on growing, and they go on suffering.

A lady is sitting on the bus with her baby, when a drunk staggers over in front of the woman, looks
down and says, ”Lady, that is the ugliest baby I have ever seen!”
The woman starts crying and everyone on the bus kicks the drunk off. They are making such a big
fuss that the bus driver pulls over and stops. He goes to the back of the bus and asks, ”What is the
matter?” The woman is inconsolable and can’t even talk. She just keeps crying.
”Look, I don’t know what he said to you”, says the driver, ”but to help calm you down I am going to
go get you a cup of tea.”

He gets off the bus, goes into a nearby hotel and comes back with the tea. ”Calm down”, says the
driver. ”Everything is okay now. See? I brought you this cup of tea and I also brought you a banana
for your pet monkey!”

Things go on growing. Whatever you have is not going to remain the same, because everything in
life is always growing. If you have thorns, then thorns will be growing; and if you have roses, then
roses will be growing.

Sannyas is only the opening of a new door, dropping the past and starting your life from ABC. If your
past life had jealousy, egoism and other problems, you can start a new life with roses. It is absolutely
in your hands. You are what you have made yourself, and you will be what you are going to make
yourself.

The Razor’s Edge, Osho

heartbeatsalute

03-05-2012, 07:32 PM

Satya Sai Baba is neither a mystic nor a philosopher, just an ordinary magician.
--OSHO--

One hypocrite in India is Satya Sai Baba. I call him a hypocrite because he knows nothing of yoga. There is nothing wrong if you don't know anything of yoga -- I don't. I can afford to be sick, nobody can object; it is my birthright to be sick. I don't know yoga. But Satya Sai Baba declares himself a great yogi; then the problem arises. Then for his appendix operation he has to go to Goa secretly. And he has to pay ten times more to the doctor so the secret should not be known, because a great yogi going for an operation? What control has he over his physiology? But it is difficult to hide because his whole ashram became curious: where has Baba disappeared? His own people became curious about where he had gone. And after the operation he had to rest for two or three days in Goa. They found out, and the media and the press -- everybody was there, and the doctor had to confess that he had done the operation.--OSHO

Question - What are the distinguishing features that make a womb worthy enough to receive a higher soul, and what are the characteristics of a Womb in which an Inferior soul may enter? What preparations are necessary in order that a higher Soul may descend? How are the preparations made? As compared to ordinary wombs, how special were the wombs that carried great souls like Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, and Jesus?

Osho - Many things will have to be considered. The first thing is: the purer the moment of lovemaking is, the purer the soul a womb can attract. But sex has been condemned so much that the moment of copulation hardly ever becomes a divine moment. Sex has already been branded as sacrilegious.

It is already rooted in our consciousness as something impure. The sexual union between husband and wife takes place in the shadows of sin; it does not transpire in a worshipful moment of prayer and bliss. Naturally, it is not possible for a pure soul to be attracted toward a womb surrounded by a cloak of sin. So in order that a higher soul may enter a womb, the first condition is that it be a divine moment of lovemaking.

In my view, the moment of sexual union is a moment of prayer. Only after prayer and meditation should the husband and wife enter into sex. The result will be twofold. One is that after meditation it won't be possible for them to enter into sex for years. The first thing that will happen after meditation is that you won't be able to enter sex. As you will go into meditation, the desire for sex will disappear -- meditation will become the way to celibacy.

Years will go by without sex. The purity ensuing from these bygone years will not be the product of a suppressed sex. It won't be the result of any vow taken by the husband and wife both practicing celibacy by sleeping separately in locked rooms, or the husband sleeping in the temple all by himself. This celibacy will not be the consequence of a vow, rather it will be a spontaneous flowering. It is simply impossible to enter sex after meditation. Meditation gives so much joy, such bliss, that why would one care for the pleasures of sex?

If husband and wife can meditate regularly for years, they won't be able to enter sex. That will have a twofold effect. One, the energy will become very dynamic and intense. A very potent sperm is needed in order to give birth to a pure soul. Weak sperms won't do.

Only an intercourse which is preceded by years of celibacy can be effective in allowing a powerful soul to enter the womb. After years of meditation when someone goes into sex -- that is, when meditation makes him competent to enter into sex -- then naturally it will have to be a divine moment, because if there had been even a slight impurity left in that moment, meditation would not have given the go-ahead.

When meditation gives the command -- that is, when the possibility to enter sex exists even after one has been in meditation -- then it means that even sex has taken on a sacredness. Now it has a divineness of its own. When two individuals make love in this divine moment, it would be better to say the union is not physical, it is very spiritual. The bodies are meeting, yet the meeting is not physical -- it is very profound and spiritual.

So giving birth to a divine soul is not merely a biological phenomenon. The meeting of two bodies simply provides an opportunity for another body to take birth; but when two souls meet as well, a situation is created for a greater soul to descend.

The births of Mahavira or Buddha are of this kind. The birth of Jesus is even more incredible. The births of Mahavira and Buddha had been prophesied. Their coming was awaited for years. Every detail was foretold -- so much so that Mahavira had even predicted in his previous life how many dreams the mother of his next life will have before his birth.

The dreams were mentioned in a sequence with their contents. Mahavira's prophecy was, "When these many dreams occur, know that I have entered the womb." He also pointed out the symbols that would appear in the dream -- a white elephant, a lotus, and so on. So people were waiting eagerly for a woman to declare she had seen all the dreams with these symbols.

In Buddha's case too, symbols were mentioned. When he was due to be born, a monk from the faraway Himalayas arrived at the palace. He was old and had been waiting. He was very worried lest he should die before the advent of Buddha. So when he came to beg at the palace, he told Buddha's father,"I know a child is to be born here. I have come for his darshan, to see him and pay my respects."

The father was very astonished to hear this. The monk was a renowned figure, very famous, a divine person in his own right. He had thousands of devotees, and he was asking to pay his regards to the child! The father was simply amazed. But he felt very happy too, because his wife had already mentioned to him the special dreams she had.

So the next day the monk arrived to see the newborn child. Seeing the child, the monk broke down and began crying bitterly. The father became very worried. He asked the monk, "Are you crying because you see a bad omen?"

The monk said, "There is no bad omen for the child. I am crying for myself. The man at whose feet I could have attained a timeless bliss, is born. But alas, I am nearing death and this child will take time to grow and flower -- I cannot wait that long. The time for my departure has come."

The birth of Jesus was awaited by the whole world -- especially so in the Middle East. The prediction was that at the time of Jesus' birth, four stars will appear in the sky. Those who knew the secret understood the symbolic meaning of the stars. A man from India journeyed to Bethlehem in order to offer his greetings on Jesus' birth. One man went from Egypt, and two from other countries. All four of them knew that the appearance of the four stars would herald the birth of Jesus.

So as soon as they saw the stars, they hurried in search of the child. The information was that those who recognized the stars would be guided by them to the place where the child was born. The stars kept moving ahead and the travelers followed them.

The wise man from Egypt who had set out in search of the child first came to Herod -- the emperor at the time of Jesus. He said to the emperor, "Perhaps you don't know, but the king of kings has arrived at last." Herod couldn't follow what the man meant by "king of kings." He thought an enemy was born who would finish him someday, so he ordered all newly born children in Jerusalem to be killed. The news reached Mary in time and she escaped. Jesus was born in hiding in a dark and dingy stable.

The story of Jesus' birth is even more significant than that of Buddha's or Mahavira's. It illustrates the question you have asked: "What preparations are necessary in order to give birth to a higher soul?" Jesus' soul was ready to take birth. A suitable mother was available, but not the father. Mariam was qualified to give birth to Jesus, but her husband was not.

That's why it has always been said Jesus was born of a virgin mother. There is a reason for saying this, because the father was irrelevant. Jesus was indeed born of a virgin mother. A bodiless soul, which the Christians call the Holy Ghost, had to enter the body of Jesus' father. Through the medium of Jesus' father, another soul remained present in his place. That means, Jesus' father was not there, only his body was.

I have mentioned before how Shankara entered another body. Similarly, a soul entered the body of Mary's husband and Jesus was born. That's why he could say he had nothing to do with Jesus' birth. He had no knowledge of what happened. Insofar as he was concerned, Mariam was virgin; in his eyes, the son was born to a virgin Mary. He was unconscious all along. His body was simply used as a medium. But Christianity is not clear on this point. Hence the Christian priest somehow tries to prove Jesus was born of a virgin mother. But he doesn't know what it means to be born of a virgin -- he is unable to prove it.

The biggest argument against Jesus in the West has been over how he could be born to a virgin girl. It is unscientific. This is true: a child cannot be born of a virgin girl. But Jesus was born of a virgin girl in the sense that his father was not consciously present at the time -- he was only a medium. He was not a conscious participant in the birth of Jesus. He was totally unaware. He was only made to function as an instrument for this phenomenon to occur.

Often it happens that many superior souls wish to take birth but they don't find any appropriate situation for their conception. Today it has become even more difficult. It has been almost impossible to create superior conditions for the conception of higher souls, because the whole science pertaining to it has been lost.

What we call conception today is absolutely animal-like -- there is no science behind it. Those who had given full consideration to the phenomenon of conception had worked out all the details. They had taken into account, for example, the minutest calculation of time in terms of finding the exact and the most characteristic moment to conceive. We can't imagine how much attention was paid to this phenomenon.

You may not be aware of the fact that more people go mad on the full moon, and less on the new moon. Science is not yet fully clear why this is so. The fact remains that the full moon does affect our mental state. Just as it brings storms in the seas, it stirs our emotions and raises them to the heights of lunacy. The word lunatic means one who is affected by the moon. luna means the moon, and lunatic means one who is moonstruck. It means the man has gone mad because he has been attacked by the moon.

There is a complete science that studies how the earth is affected by various forces every moment, every hour. If conception can take place during the time of these unique extraterrestrial influences, the results will be highly significant. And if the conception does not occur during these moments, the results can be to the contrary.

The whole of astrology was developed for the very purpose of finding out the exact moment of conception, because the influences working in that particular moment alone can give some indication of the conceived soul. At least some rough data can be obtained of the possibilities hidden in that moment of conception. Each second, each hour has its own implication.

So before entering sex, one needs the strength of meditation, years of celibacy behind it. Keep in mind, however, my understanding of brahmacharya, celibacy -- it is neither an outcome of suppression nor repression. By celibacy I mean that which comes on its own, which happens spontaneously. Then one may enter in sex with a prayerful heart, invoking pure souls to accept the invitation. Not only are many such souls available, but there is a continuous race among them for entering a womb.

So in this situation, if you can invite certain souls, the subsequent results will become more clearly evident. Also, when such a soul is conceived, for nine months the baby needs to grow in the womb within a certain psychological and spiritual environment. For example, Mahavira's mother was kept under very special conditions. So was Buddha's mother.

One prediction made before Buddha's birth was that he would be born when the mother is in a standing position; and that he will be born not inside, but outside the house. It was quite a strange thing: as Buddha's mother was traveling to her parents, on her way she stopped for a while and stood under the sal tree, and Buddha was born, under the open skies.

Ordinarily, babies are born in the darkness of night. And normally, people make love in dark chambers, sneakily, with a sense of fear and guilt. People look at sex as if it is some kind of sin, a crime which has to be done surreptitiously, without anyone knowing about it. Obviously, sex of this kind is bound to produce grave consequences. In order to make love, freedom, openness, purity are essential.

At the time of lovemaking, even small things bring distinct results, such as the color on the walls, the light in the room, the fragrance. A whole science exists around it. If we could make use of the science of child-conception, a complete transformation of the human race could be brought about.

Even little things make a difference. Currently, a scientist is carrying on a small experiment which will bring about a fundamental change. He has devised a small belt which is to be tied around a pregnant woman's abdomen. It so happened that once a woman had to wear a belt for some reason in her pregnancy -- she was ill -- but it created a strange effect on the child. It was found that the belt pressed against the baby's head and the child was born with a very high IQ. This was purely accidental; a particular center of the child's brain was pressed.

Following this incident, the scientist has carried out many more experiments. It may well be that the child was naturally endowed with such high intelligence, and the whole thing was just a coincidence. However, the subsequent experiments proved that if pressure is applied at a particular place on a pregnant woman's abdomen, it causes a remarkable change In the child's Intelligence.

There are many asanas, body postures, which are meant to bring about the required pressure at a particular point. There are many breathing techniques for the same purpose. There are many words which, when articulated properly, bring about a certain pressure. All of these become helpful in allowing the genius, the health, the capability, the potentiality of the child to manifest fully.

Up to now man has discovered who knows how many ways to cause mischief, but he has not been putting enough energy into discovering ways which can build, enrich the future of mankind. But it is all possible. As soon as a woman conceives, she begins to reflect the possibilities the child is endowed with.

It is in fact a dual process. In pregnancy, if the mother becomes irritable, angry, the child will be born with an angry temperament. Similarly, if the soul of an angry disposition has entered the womb, a woman who otherwise never became angry would begin to show anger. This is indeed very remarkable. And in view of this fact, experiments can be done for treating the anger of the conceived child right when it is in a seed form.

There are many souls which can take birth but haven't been able to yet. It's a very strange situation. It is something like a university which may give some people education up to the B.A., but has no additional provision or facility for postgraduate study or for research. In that case, many graduates would have to be on the lookout for some place where they can work toward an M.A. or do further research.

This world of ours develops the being and intelligence of some people only to a certain point, and then deserts them. Beyond that we have no means to help them further. But a systematic provision can be made. The right type of possibilities and conditions can be created so higher souls may find their way into this world. So let me repeat the few basic points.

The first thing is: our whole attitude toward sex is sick and dangerous. As long as the sacredness of sex is not recognized in this world, we'll go on causing more and more harm to mankind. So long as one has not become meditative prior to entering sex, his sex will remain animal-like: it can never have a human quality. And secondly, without a prolonged period of celibacy preceding the sexual involvement the creation of a powerful sperm is not possible. And without it there is no possibility of giving birth to a powerful soul.

Source: from Osho Book “And Now and Here”

heartbeatsalute

03-05-2012, 07:41 PM

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Hidden-Mysteries/Gautam-Buddha.htm

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Hidden-Mysteries/osho_on_buddha.jpg

Osho on Gautam Buddha Birth as Maitreya

Question - You have said that Buddha attained Mahaparinirvana, but also that Buddha Is to come once again in human form and will be known as Maitreya. How is It possible to take on a human form after reaching nirvana? Please explain this.
Osho - This is somewhat difficult; therefore, I did not speak about it yesterday. It requires a detailed explanation; yet I will now give you a brief explanation. It is not possible to return after reaching the seventh plane. There is no rebirth after the seventh body. It is a point of no return; you cannot come back from there. But it is also true that Buddha has said he will come again in the form of Maitreya.

Now both these things seem contradictory: I say you cannot return after the seventh body and Buddha has promised to come again. Buddha attained the seventh body and merged into the nirvana – then how is this possible? There is another way. Now you will have to know and understand a few things. When we die only the physical body drops; the rest of the six bodies remain with us. When a person reaches the fifth plane, the first four bodies drop away and only three remain – the fifth, the sixth and the seventh.

In the fifth body a person can make a resolve to keep his second, third and fourth bodies, and this can happen if the resolve is very intense and deep. And for a person like Buddha this was an easy matter: he can leave behind forever his second, third and fourth bodies. Like a mass of energy these bodies of Buddha keep on moving in space.

All the feelings that Buddha had acquired in his infinite lives are the property of the second – the etheric body. And the impressions of all the karmas that Buddha had in his previous lives are accumulated in the third – the astral body. The fourth body carries all the achievements of Buddha’s mind. All of his achievements beyond the mind have been expressed by him through the mind as all expressions are given through the mind.

Whenever a man wishes to make known his attainments of the fifth or even the seventh body he has to make use of his fourth body – because the vehicle of expression is the fourth body. So the one who has heard Buddha more than anyone or anything else is in his own fourth body. Whatsoever he has thought, lived and known is collected in his fourth body.

These first three bodies disintegrate very easily. When a person enters the fifth body these three bodies are destroyed. When a man enters the seventh body all the previous six bodies are destroyed. But if a person of the fifth plane so desires he can leave all the vibrations of these three bodies in space. It is just as we are now making stations in space: this collection of Buddha’s second, third and fourth bodies will go on moving in space until they manifest themselves in an individual by the name of Maitreya.

So when a person of the required state for Maitreya is born these three bodies of Buddha will enter into him. Until then they will await his coming. When these three bodies enter into that person he will attain the caliber of Buddha, because they are an accumulation of all the experiences, all the emotions, desires and activities of Buddha. Now, for instance, suppose I leave my body behind here and it is well preserved.

In America a man died about three or four years ago. He left a trust of millions of dollars and he willed that this be used to preserve his body until the time when science discovers the secret of bringing a dead body back to life. Millions of dollars are spent to preserve his body so that it should not deteriorate. His body is preserved by a scientific process. If by the end of the century we succeed in reviving the dead this body will be brought back to life. But the soul will be different; it cannot be the same.

The body will be the same: his eyes, his color, his features, his way of walking, all of his physical habits, will be the same. In a sense, the man who is dead will be represented in the body. If the man was centered around his physical body – which he must have been or else this keen desire to preserve the body would not have been there – without any idea of the other bodies, another soul can act for him.

It will act exactly in the same way as the dead man, and scientists will then say that it is the same man come back to life. All his remembrances and recollections that are stored in the physical brain will awaken once again: he will be able to recognize the pictures of his mother and his son who have long been dead; he will recognize the town where he was born; he will point out the place where he died; he will also name the people that were present when he died. The soul will be different although the brain content will be the same.

Now scientists claim that very soon they will be able to transplant memory. This will be possible. If I die the whole of my recollections and memories are lost with me. But now it is possible to save the whole mechanism of my memories at the time of my death just as we preserve eyes for transplanting.

Tomorrow someone will be able to see with my eyes. And it is not that I alone can love with my heart – someone else may also love with my heart tomorrow. Now it is not possible to promise that ”My heart is forever yours,” because this very heart can make the same vow to another in the distant future.

In the same way memory will also be transplanted. It will take time to bring this about because it is very delicate and very subtle. But in future, as we donate eyes to an eye bank there will be memory banks also. Then my memory will be transplanted into a small child who will then know all that I had to learn. He will grow up already knowing so many things because my memory will be a part of his cerebral makeup.

Then my thoughts will be his, my remembrances will be his, and in certain matters he will think the same way I do, because he will have my brain. Now Buddha has experimented in a different direction – a direction which is not scientific but occult. Through some methods efforts have been made to preserve his second, third and fourth bodies. Buddha does not exist any more; the soul that lived within was lost at the seventh plane.

But before the soul was merged into the seventh, arrangements were made to see that these three bodies – the second, third and fourth – did not die. The momentum of Buddha’s determination and promise was instilled into them. It is just as if I were to throw a stone with enough force for it to travel fifty miles; then I die soon after throwing the stone. But my death cannot interfere with the movement of the stone.

It has the force I gave it to travel fifty miles, and it will do that whether I am there or not. The strength I exerted will keep the stone going. Buddha has given a momentum to these three bodies and they will live. He has also told how long they can remain. Now the time is ripe for Maitreya to take birth. This very experiment was carried out upon J. Krishnamurti so that he would attain these three bodies of Buddha.

First this experiment was carried out on Nityananda, the elder brother of Krishnamurti, but he died in the process. This is a very unique process – one which is difficult to go through. An effort was made to separate Nityananda’s second, third and fourth bodies and replace them with Maitreya’s. Then Nityananda died. Then this same experiment was tried on Krishnamurti, but this also could not succeed.

Then it was tried on one or two more people: George Arundale was one upon whom the experiment was tried by some who knew of this mystery. Among those who knew of this secret, Madame Blavatsky was the most profound woman of our century as far as the knowledge of occult science is concerned. Annie Besant was another; Leadbeater also had a lot of understanding in occult matters. There are very few people who had this understanding.

These few people knew that now the power behind the three bodies of Buddha was about to diminish. If Maitreya would not take birth these bodies would not be able to hold on any longer; they would disperse. Now their momentum is about to end. Someone should now be ready to absorb these three bodies. Whoever absorbs these will in a way cause the rebirth of Buddha. The soul of Buddha will not come back, but the soul of the individual will take on the bodies of Buddha and work accordingly.

That person will at once involve himself in the mission of Buddha. Not every person can be in this state. Whoever he is he should at least be of a level of consciousness that is almost as high as was Buddha’s. Only such a one will be able to absorb his three bodies; otherwise he will die. So the experiment was unsuccessful, because there were many difficulties in the process.

Endeavors still go on. Even today there are small esoteric groups who are trying to bring down these three bodies of Buddha. But now there is no extensive propaganda about it, because that proved harmful. There was a possibility of the three bodies descending into Krishnamurti. He was worthy of it and this was widely advertised. This propaganda was done in good faith.

It was done for the reason that when Buddha’s advent took place he should be quickly recognized. It was also done in order to revive the past-life memories of those now living who existed at the time of Buddha so that they could recognize that this was the same man. But this propaganda turned out to be detrimental to the process. It created a reaction in the mind of Krishnamurti, who has a modest, reserved and sensitive personality.

It was difficult for him to be in a crowd. If this experiment had been carried out silently in a secluded place, if nobody would have known about it until the happening took place, it is very likely that the happening would have taken place.

But it did not take place. Krishnamurti refused to let go of his second, third and fourth bodies to be replaced by the three bodies of Buddha. This was a great blow to the occult science of our times. Such a vast and intricate experiment had never been performed in this world anywhere except in Tibet. This process has been carried out in Tibet for a long time, and many souls work through the medium of other bodies.

Question - Is Carlos Castaneda's Guru, Don Juan an Enlightened Master?
Osho - If there were someone like Don Juan he would be enlightened, he would be like a Buddha or a Lao Tzu -- but there is nobody like Don Juan. Carlos Castaneda's books are ninety-nine per cent fiction -- beautiful, artful, but fiction. As there are scientific fictions, there are spiritual fictions also. There are third-rate spiritual fictions and first-rate ones: if you want third-rate, then read Lobsang Rampa; if you want first-rate, then read Carlos Castaneda. He is a great master -- of fiction.

But I say ninety-nine per cent fiction. One per cent of truth is there, hidden here and there; you will have to find it. It is good even to read it as fiction. Don't bother about Rampa's fiction, because it is rubbish created by a mediocre mind -- and of course created for mediocre minds. But Carlos Castaneda is worth reading. When I say fiction I don't mean don't read him, I mean read him more carefully, because one per cent of truth is there. You will have to read it very carefully, but don't swallow it completely because it is ninety-nine per cent fiction.

It can help your growth -- it can create a desire to grow. That's why I say it is beautiful. But it can hinder growth also if you take it at its surface value. This man Carlos is really crafty, very clever. Rarely it happens, such cleverness -- because it is very easy to create scientific fiction, not much imagination is needed, but to create spiritual fiction is very very difficult; one needs a great artistic and imaginary mind. Because things you don't know, how can you even imagine them? That's why I say one per cent of truth is there. On that one per cent of truth he has been able to create a big edifice. On that one per cent of truth he has been able to project much imagination. On that one iota of truth he has made the whole house, a beautiful palace -- a fairy tale. But that one per cent of truth is there, otherwise it would have been impossible.

So one per cent of Don Juan must be there somewhere or other. He must have met somebody; maybe his name was Don Juan, maybe not, that is not material, that doesn't matter. Carlos has come across a being superior to himself, he has come across a being who knows some secrets. Maybe he has not realized them, maybe he has stolen them, maybe he has just borrowed them from someone else. But he has met somebody who has somehow got some facts of spiritual life and this man has been able to create imagination around it. And the imagination becomes possible if you use drugs as a help -- very easy, because drugs are nothing but an aid to imagination.

This man has come across some being who knows something, and then through drugs, LSD and others, he has projected that small truth into imaginary worlds. Then his whole fiction is created. It is a drug trip, but a good experiment in itself. And when I say all these things I am not condemning Carlos. In fact I have come to love the man. It is a rare flight of imagination, and if it is a hundred per cent fiction then Carlos himself is a rare being. If he has not come across anybody at all then he must have that one per cent of reality in himself. Because otherwise it is impossible -- you can only build a house on a foundation, even an imaginary house needs at least a foundation in reality. You can make a house of cards but at least the ground, the solid ground is needed. That much is true.

So read, because you will have to read. Every age has its own fictions, romances; one has to pass through them. You will have to read. You cannot escape Carlos Castaneda. But remember that only one per cent is true -- and you have to find it.If you have been reading Gurdjieff's books, particularly ALL AND EVERYTHING, then you can become artful about how to find the true, how to sort out chaff from wheat. If you have not read ALL AND EVERYTHING, it is a good beginning.

First you should read ALL AND EVERYTHING of George Gurdjieff and then you can read Carlos Castaneda's books. It is a very difficult training to read Gurdjieff; in fact no more than a few dozen people exist in the world who have read his book ALL AND EVERYTHING completely. It is difficult. It is a one thousand-page book and Gurdjieff is a master of hiding things. He goes on saying irrelevant things, useless things, spinning tales within tales -- hundreds of pages and then one line of truth, but it is worth seeking, it is a diamond. A hundred pages of rubbish, but then comes a diamond -- it is worth it.

If you can find the diamonds in Gurdjieff it will be a great training for you. And then you can find in Carlos Castaneda what is true and what is not true. Otherwise you can become a victim of a fiction. And I think many Americans particularly are roaming in Mexico in search of Don Juan. Foolish!

TAO, the tree treasures, Osho

heartbeatsalute

03-05-2012, 07:59 PM

Question - Beloved Master What is "Coincidence"?

Osho - Anand Viramo, there are three things to be understood. One is the law of cause and effect. That applies to the material world and because science believes only in the law of cause and effect, it denies everything else. The law of cause and effect is mechanical, there is no coincidence. You heat the water to one hundred degrees and it evaporates, there is no coincidence. It is not that one day it evaporates at ninety-nine degrees, another day at ninety degrees. There is no question of the mood, the water cannot decide, the water is mechanically ruled by a law of cause and effect. Those who believe in the law of cause and effect, they will not believe in any coincidence. Everything is predetermined, there is nothing like coincidence. Everything has an inevitability.

Then there is another law -- Carl Gustav Jung called it the law of synchronicity. Two things can happen together although they are not related as cause and effect. For example if somebody is singing a beautiful song, some cord in your heart is touched, but it is not inevitable, it is not cause and effect -- it may happen, it may not happen; it may happen to a few people, it may not happen to a few others. It may happen to you one day, it may not happen to you another day.

Today you are feeling happy, you have met your woman, your friend, you are riding on the winds. Somebody is singing a song, suddenly it strikes a note in you, you also feel like singing. Somebody is dancing, your feet suddenly have the feel to dance, the mood to dance.

But your wife has died, you are sad and somebody is singing and it hurts. The moon has risen in the sky, a full-moon night, and you are sad -- the moon also looks sad, not beautiful. You are in such a sad state that the full-moon night looks like it is ridiculing you; it looks so indifferent to you, so unconcerned, so hard. You are in such a sad state and the moon is still shining the same way it used to, and the roses are blooming and the birds are singing. Nobody seems to be concerned about you, nobody seems to care about you. The universe seems to be very neutral, very cold. You feel hurt, you feel alienated, you feel a stranger, an outsider. Now there will be no synchronicity.

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Osho/osho/Osho-on-Coincidences.jpg

Osho on Coincidence

The law of synchronicity means sometimes you fit and sometimes you don't fit. It is fluid. The law of synchronicity belongs to the world of mind; just as cause and effect belong to the world of matter, body, the law of synchronicity belongs to the world of mind, heart. Beyond these two there is a possibility of coincidence too. That means no law pertains, or you can call it the law of freedom. That is the ultimate, the law of your innermost core, in fact it is not a law because it is a law of freedom. Things can happen which are not caused by anything and which are not created by the law of synchronicity, just coincidences.

Coincidence simply means that there is a possibility of freedom. Now there are people here of all the three kinds. There are people here who have come according to the law of cause and effect; they had to come, it was inevitable, unavoidable. There was something pulling them like a magnet, they could not resist it.

There are people here who have come not through the law of cause and effect, but they felt a synchronicity, a harmony with me, a deep accord. If they wanted to resist they could have resisted very easily, if they wanted not to come they could have remained. There was not some gravitational pull, they had to choose. It is out of their choice that they are here.

And there is also the third category of people who have just come as a coincidence, accidental. A friend was here, and you had come to see your friend, not to see me, not to listen to me, not at all concerned about me; you had come just to see your friend -- but then you got caught. The friend may not be here anymore, the friend may have escaped. Now this is coincidence.

Your husband was coming here, and you simply followed him just as a dutiful wife. Now there are many children, many kids who are coincidentally here. Their parents are here, so they are here; their being here is not their choice, just a coincidence. Their parents are Christian, they are Christian; their parents are Hindu, so they are Hindu; their parents have become sannyasins, they have become sannyasins. This is just coincidence. All these three things happen. The higher you rise, the higher your consciousness is, the more aware you become of freedom. At the lowest point everything is determined, at the highest point nothing is determined.

Buddha renounced his palace and the first day, when he was walking on the bank of a river, he created much confusion in the mind of a great astrologer. The astrologer was coming from Varanasi; he had achieved the highest degrees possible in those days. He had become the most famous astrologer; now he is going back to his part of the country. He saw Buddha's footprint on the wet sand; he could not believe his eyes, because it was against all his astrological knowledge. The feet of the Buddha had a few marks which were clearly there on the sand. Those marks were thought to belong only to a man who is the ruler of the whole world, a CHAKRAVARTIN, who is the ruler of six continents.

Now what is the ruler of six continents doing in this poor village, on this dirty bank? And why should the emperor of all the six continents walk barefooted? He could not believe his eyes. He studied them very minutely and there was no suspicion, no doubt. Either his astrological books are not right or some emperor has passed from here. He followed those footprints in search of the man and he found Buddha sitting under a tree. Now he was more puzzled; the man looked as if he was the emperor of all the six continents, and yet he was a beggar with a begging bowl.

He bowed down to Buddha and he said, "I would like to see your feet. I am an astrologer, you may have heard my name." He looked at the feet and he said, "Now you have created such confusion in my mind, I have never been so confused. For twelve years I have studied astrology, should I throw my scriptures in the river and forget all about it? You should be the emperor of the whole world. What are you doing here? How can you be a beggar?"

Buddha laughed and he said, "Yes, there is no need to throw away your books, there is no need to be so confused. Your books are right. I was meant to be a great king, but that belongs to the law of cause and effect. If I had simply followed the pattern in which I was born, then I would have been the king, a great king, a chakravartin. But because I renounced, I took a conscious, deliberate step against the pattern that was imposed, imprinted in my being. I revolted against it, I rebelled against it, I became free of it. I became a witness of it, I dropped my identification with my mind, and once you drop your identification with your mind you are no longer under the law of cause and effect."

First you enter into the world of synchronicity and then, ultimately, you enter into the world of freedom. In the world of freedom there are only coincidences. Nothing is absolutely certain, everything is possible. Nothing is impossible. Napoleon is reported to have said: Nothing is impossible. But Napoleon cannot say that, he should not say it. A Buddha can say: Nothing is impossible, all things become possible.

You ask me, Anand Viramo, "What is 'coincidence'?"
It simply means that life is not just mechanical. It is not determined by fate and it is not determined by history. It is not determined by your past or by your past karmas. It is not determined, as Karl Marx says, by historical necessity. It is determined only for those who live unconsciously; otherwise it is freedom. You can choose and you can choose to be anything. You can even choose to be a nothingness, that is the ultimate freedom. And coincidences are always happening in ordinary life too. Life is not as logical as you think, it is very illogical. Only the surface looks logical.

The preacher decided to enumerate the Ten Commandments to his flock.
When he got to "Thou Shalt Not Steal," he noticed a fellow in the first row acting nervously. When the preacher got to "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery," he noticed the fellow brighten up and smile. After the service, the preacher approached the man and asked him the reason for his unseemly conduct -- to which the happy one replied, "When you said, 'Thou Shalt Not Steal,' I discovered my umbrella was gone. But when you said, 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,' I remembered where I had left it."

A bachelor named Clem showed up at his weekly poker game with a black eye.
His friend Joe asked what had happened to him.
"Well," Clem replied, "when I was getting dressed this morning a button came off my pants. I don't know how to sew a thing, so I went to the next apartment and asked the woman there if she would sew it on for me."
"Oh boy," Joe said, "she probably thought you were making a pass and socked you, huh?"
"No, that was not it," said Clem. "She was as nice about it as she could be. Got out a needle and thread right then and there. She sat down in front of me and sewed the button on while I was standing there. But just as she finished and was biting the thread off, her husband walked in."

Life is not just logic. It does not follow a clean-cut path, it goes zigzag. And it is good that it is not simply logical, otherwise there would be no joy, there would be no surprise, you would be simply machines, not men. Coincidences never happen to machines, they can't happen to machines, they can happen only to man. It is your being conscious that makes them possible. Remove man from the earth and all coincidences will disappear, things will be following simple, logical law. But remove man and life loses all its beauty, because life loses its ultimate peak of evolution.

Questioner: What is the meaning of wearing Orange clothes as a Sannyasin?

Osho - It is true that wearing a particular kind of clothes does not make one a sannyasin, but it is also true that sannyasins do wear some particular kind of clothes. Clothes don't make for sannyas, but that does not mean that a sannyasin cannot have his own clothes. He can. Clothes are not that important, but they are not that unimportant either.

What clothes you wear has meaning. And why you wear clothes has meaning too. Someone wears loose clothes and someone else prefers tight ones. There is not much of a difference between loose and tight clothes, but it does say something about the mental makeup of the people who wear them. Why does someone choose loose garments for himself while another chooses tight ones? If a person is quiet and peaceful he will go in for loose clothing, he won't like tight ones. On the other hand, tight clothing is preferred by one who is disturbed, hot-tempered and sexual. Loose clothes are not good for fighting. That is why soldiers all over the world have tight-fitting outfits; they cannot be given loose uniforms. The job of a soldier is such that he needs to be tight and smart. His clothes really should be so tight that he is always ready for action, that he feels he can jump out of his body whenever he is required to do so. But a monk, a meditator, a sannyasin, needs loose and light clothes.

Orange clothes have their own utility. Not that one cannot be a sannyasin without being in an ochre robe, but the ochre robe does have its due place in sannyas. And those who discovered it, after long search and experiment, had a good many reasons to commend the ochre color for sannyas.

We will come to know the significance of different colors if we make some small experiments with them. Our difficulty is that we never make such experiments. Take seven glass bottles of different colors -- there are seven colors in all -- and fill them with water from the same river and leave them for a while under the sun. You will be amazed to find that the colors of the glass have affected the quality of the water, each in its own way. There are now seven kinds of water in those bottles. The water in the yellow bottle will deteriorate in no time, while the water in the red bottle will remain pure for a long time.

You can ask, "What does the color of a bottle do?" The color of the glass affects the rays of the sun in its own particular manner when they pass through it. While the yellow color accepts a particular kind of ray, the red one accepts another kind, and the water inside the bottles is affected by those rays in a big way. The rays of the sun serve as food and nourishment for the water.

Experiments and research conducted over thousands of years led to the discovery of ochre clothes for sannyas, and it has yielded rich results. Physicists know well the function of colors. They know that the color of your clothes keeps the same color away from it. We think just the opposite; we think that a piece of red cloth is red, but it is not so. For instance, when the rays of the sun, which have seven colors, fall on a particular object and the object appears to you as red, it means that the said object has absorbed all the colors of the sun except the red one; it has kept the red away. And that is why you see the object as red. And if some object appears to you to be blue, it means that the object has repelled the blue color. So when this blue of the rays of the sun reaches your eyes, you see the object as blue in color. So whatever color you have on your body, it will not allow the same kind of color to enter you.

Ochre was selected as the color of sannyas after a great deal of investigation and experiment. The color red arouses many kinds of sexuality in a human being, because it is very strong and vital. On entering a human body it provokes its sexuality. For this reason people living in hot countries are more sexual than others. The hotter a country's climate, the more sexual its people.

It is not accidental that a book on sexology like the KAMASUTRA was not written in a country with a cold climate. It is the same with TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS; it is the product of a tropical climate. People living in tropical climates are more sexual because of the sun. Therefore people who were working on sannyas from many directions thought that sexuality could be calmed if the red color were kept away from sannyasins' bodies -- hence ochre was selected.

You can ask why ochre was selected and not red. Pure red could well have been selected; it would have been more effective in calming sexuality. But there was a difficulty in choosing red, true out-and-out red; it would have totally prevented red from entering the body. But the body needs some amount of red rays to keep fit, so it would have been bad for the health to keep red totally away from the body.

There is yet another reason we did not opt for pure red. Even the sight of the pure red is harsh and harmful; we had to be wary that the color of sannyas should be such that it did not hurt others. Sannyas takes care of everybody and everything. You put a piece of red cloth in front of a bull and see how furious he becomes. The red hits the bull's eyes hard; he cannot take it.

You will be surprised to know that people who work on color psychology in the West have arrived a very strange conclusions. A lot of work on colors is in progress in the West; large scale research is under way. And they have found many new uses of colors. An owner of a department store in America had a study done on the colors on cans and containers of goods he sold. It was amazing to find that even the color influenced the sale of goods in a big way. A researcher kept constant watch on the customers -- mostly women do the shopping just to see how they were attracted to various colors. It was found that while the yellow attracted only twenty percent of the customers, red attracted eighty percent. The sale of the same article increased fourfold when the color of its container was changed from yellow to red. Red attracts women like anything, and it is not surprising that this color has been the most popular among women all over the world.

So the selection of ochre for sannyas is meaningful. Ochre is a shade of red; it is less bright, less offensive. While it retains all the advantages of red, it discards its disadvantages. It diminishes sexuality as much as red does; at the same time it does not harm you in the way red does. There are many other advantages of the ochre, but it will not he possible to go into them all here. It would be a lengthy subject if we were to go into colors in detail. But a few things can be discussed.

Ochre is the color of the sunrise. When the sun is just emerging on the eastern horizon, when the first light of dawn begins to show itself, its color is exactly ochre. When you enter meditation, the first light that you see is ochre, and the ultimate light of meditation is blue. Meditation begins with ochre and ends with blue; it reaches its peak with blue. Ochre is the index of the beginning of meditation; a sannyasin encounters this color on entering meditation. So in the course of the whole day the color of his own clothes reminds him of meditation again and again. An association is established between the two, clothes and meditation. Ochre helps him in going into meditation, which is an integral part of the life of a sannyasin.

If you want to remember you have to buy a particular thing from the market you make a knot in your handkerchief or in any other part of your clothing so it reminds you in time. There is obviously no connection whatsoever between a knot and something to be purchased from the market, but when you reach the market the first thing that comes to mind is the knot, and in association with it, the thing to be bought. The knot becomes associated with it; it becomes a kind of conditioning.

Pavlov's experiment in this respect has become famous. He put a piece of bread before a dog and rang a bell at the same time. The sight of the bread immediately made the dog salivate. Pavlov continued this practice of putting the bread before the dog and ringing the bell for a full fifteen days, after which he stopped putting the bread but continued to ring the bell. But he found to his surprise that the dog still salivated just at the sound of the bell. What has happened to this dog? An association between the sound of the bell and the secretion of saliva has been established, and this association has created a conditioned reflex. Now the sound of the bell is enough to remind the dog of the bread that came with the bell.

We live our whole life in this way; we live like Pavlov's dog. All our behavior is nothing but a bunch of conditioned reflexes, and the irony is that most of our reflexes are wrong.

If, while he is walking, eating or taking a bath, his clothes repeatedly remind a sannyasin of the first color of the meditative experience, then the ochre color has served a great purpose. It is a kind of conditioning, a knot to remind him over and over again that meditation is his way. But this does not mean that one cannot be a sannyasin without the ochre robe. Sannyas is such a lofty thing that it cannot be confined to garments. But garments are not altogether useless; they are very meaningful. I would like millions of people to be seen in ochre all over the world.

Source – from Osho Book “Krishna : The Man and His Philosophy”

heartbeatsalute

03-05-2012, 08:31 PM

Zen Master in Jail

Osho : A Zen master had been put into jail several times.... Now a step further! These Zen people are really eccentric people, mad people – but they do beautiful things.

A Zen master had been put into jail several times.... Now, it is one thing to forgive a thief, it is one thing not to think that he is bad, it is another thing to go to jail oneself. And not once, many times – for stealing small things from his neighbours. And the neighbours knew, and they were puzzled: Why does this man steal? and such small things. But the moment he would be out of prison he would steal again, and he would go back. Even the judges were worried. But they had to send him to jail, because he would confess.

He would never say, ’I have not stolen.’

Finally the neighbours gathered together, and they said, ’Sir, don’t steal any more. You are getting old, and we are ready to provide you with all that you need – all your necessities, whatsoever it is. You stop this! We are very much worried, and we are very sad. Why do you go on doing this?

And the old man laughed. And he said, ’I steal in order to get in with the prisoners, and bring them the inner message. Who will help them? Outside, for you prisoners, there are many masters. But inside the jail there is no master. Who will help them, you tell me?

This is my way to get in and help those people. So when my punishment is over and I am thrown out, I have to steal something and go back again. I am going to continue this. And I have found there in jail such beautiful souls, such innocent souls – sometimes far MORE innocent....’

Once it happened, one of my friends became a governor of a state in India, and he allowed me to go into jails all over his state. And I went for years, and I was surprised. The people who are in jails are far more innocent than the politicians in New Delhi, than the rich people, than the so-called saints. I know almost all the saints of this country.

They are more cunning. I have found in the criminals such innocent souls.... I can understand this old Zen master’s idea – of stealing, of getting caught, and bringing the message to them. ’I steal in order to get in with the prisoners and bring them the inner message.’

Source: " Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 2 " - Osho

heartbeatsalute

03-05-2012, 08:35 PM

Osho - Why am I forcing situations according to my Will

Question - Beloved Osho, Why am I forcing situations according to my will, instead of accepting them and letting them just happen? I have a feeling that my body makes me aware of it, reacting with high fever.

Osho - Devam Navyo, the upbringing of man is so poisonous, so crippling, that it destroys all that is significant and valuable in you and replaces it with cruelty, violence, a desire to dominate. The whole of society from all sides supports this destruction of your innocence; it is favorable to them.

Forcing anything simply means you are forcing against yourself. This creates the schizophrenia, the split personality which is fighting with itself. This is the most ugly and destructive device which has been used by the vested interests for thousands of years. They found a simple clue for how to destroy the individual. The individual is a danger -- a danger against exploitation, a danger against slavery, a danger against any kind of enforcement. An individual would die rather than submit.

Individuality has a dignity.... But man has been taken away from his individuality by a simple device. Put the individual in conflict -- and you know the ancient proverb: a house divided cannot stand for long. You are continuously fighting with yourself because you have been given such stupid ideas about yourself: you have to choose between either your nature, your relaxedness with nature, or thousands of years of conditioning -- and conditionings go deeper and deeper every day. Pleasure has been condemned, non-seriousness has been condemned, playfulness has been condemned. The whole of humanity has been turned into utter seriousness, and seriousness is a psychological sickness. It can seep deeper and can make even your soul sick.
There is nothing to be serious about in the world.

There are only three things that happen in your life. One has already happened, and you could not do anything about it -- your birth. Another is death; again, although it has not happened yet, you cannot do anything about it. So drop these two things completely, they are beyond your grasp. Between these two remains life, love, rejoicing.

A man who is alive cannot be suppressed so easily. A man who loves has a clarity of vision and cannot be befooled by any politicians. And a man who knows how to be playful will not be found in any church, any temple, any mosque, any synagogue. Those are the places where people go who have died before their death -- those who have taken a standpoint against life, love, against playfulness, against joy, against the whole universe.

But if you become blinded by these conditions, then you will start repressing within yourself any possibility that can make you more lively, more loving, more blissful, more ecstatic. It is a struggle between you and your whole past. The past is long; it has gone to your very roots. But if you are alert enough there is still time to get out of the net, out of the chains of the past.

A man who is free from the past is the only man who is free to live in the present. And a strange thing to be remembered: the man who is free from past, as if he is absolutely new and fresh on this beautiful planet, will also be automatically free from future.
Future is a projection of the past. The past exists no more the future does not exist yet -- but the past gives you ambitions and desires and all kinds of stupid ideas of greed and desire. Automatically you start looking at the future as a refuge.

And the reality consists only of now, the present. It has nothing to do with the past and nothing to do with the future. It is so concentrated in this moment that if you can be in this moment, all that you are seeking and searching will be fulfilled. This moment is the door to the divine. My whole effort here is to pull all my people away from the past and from the future and just make them available to the intense beauty of the present.

Live moment to moment, dropping the past continuously, as dust gathered on the mirror. A man who is contented in the present will never bother about the future. You think about the future because your present is misery; you are in utter agony. To avoid it, not to look at it, you focus on faraway goals. Those goals are never to be fulfilled. You will become addicted with ambitions and goals; but remember, wherever you will be, it will always be present, never future.

Once you have forgotten to live the present you have already died. It is another matter that it may take sixty, seventy or eighty years for you to be buried or burned on a funeral pyre -- but you have died long before. The moment you have lost contact with the present your death has happened. But if you can regain the contact again, resurrection is possible.

Only the present can give you the space to relax and not to force anything. It is the past that gives you ideals, moralities, against nature. You cannot win against nature; it is so big and so huge and you are simply a small dewdrop in the ocean of nature. The dewdrop cannot fight with the ocean. It has just to relax and become one with the ocean. According to me, an authentic sannyasin, a seeker of truth, is a seeker of the present.

You are asking, Navyo, "Why am I forcing situations according to my will?" These are stupid ideas that have been given to you. You don't have any will; the very idea of willpower is absolutely a fallacy. The will belongs to existence. You can participate in that will if you drop your personality, your separation; you will have the universal will within you. You don't have individual wills, but it is ego-satisfying when people tell you that you are a man of great will. What is man? Just a fistful of dust... Yes, something is also present within that dust, but that does not belong to you. That belongs to the total.

Secondly, why are you forcing situations? Have you not seen a river coming from the mountains? It comes from high peaks where the snow has never melted, passing through valleys, passing through unknown territory. Where is the river going? It is utterly relaxed, with no goal to be tense about, nowhere to reach. Each moment it is enjoying the trees it is passing by, the mountains it is descending. And one day, every river without exception reaches the ocean.

But every man is not so fortunate. Most of them get lost in a desert and evaporate on a funeral pyre. Only a few fortunate ones, the blessed ones, reach the ocean. The secret is so simple and so obvious; that's why it misses you. Who are you to force situations? What power have you got to force situations? Situations are coming from existence itself. The wiser course will be to be in accord with them, not in discord. In accord you can ride on those situations; but the moment you start fighting... you are so tiny and the universe is so vast, there is no possibility of any victory. Then frustration sets in. Then misery, agony, suffering follow.

Be just like a white cloud passing in the sky without any desire to reach anywhere. There is no need; you are already there. What more do you want? And if the winds are blowing towards the south, the white cloud goes towards the south. Each moment of floating high above, on the air, in the sky, is such an ecstasy that who cares whether the direction is south or north or east or west? And if suddenly the winds change and they start moving again towards the north, the cloud does not complain; it does not say that this is illogical, "we were going towards the south and suddenly for no reason at all you started moving towards the north again." Without any resistance the cloud simply starts moving with the winds wherever they are going. There is no conflict between the cloud and the wind.

And that should be the right standpoint of all seekers of truth: no conflict with nature, no conflict with existence, and all your misery, all your tension, all your anguish and angst will disappear on their own accord. They are your creation. Of course you are not totally responsible; they are the heritage of a long, ugly, unnatural past.

What kind of situations do you try to change? Love arises in your heart, but the society says that love is blind, beware of it. It is infatuation; it is a kind of slavery and you will repent for it, so it is better from the very beginning not to allow such things. And the head is full of all this kind of morality, puritanism, and you start fighting with your heart.

Your head and your heart are not together, that is the problem. Your head is full of all kinds of nonsense, and that nonsense does not belong to you. It has been given to you by your parents, by your society, by your teachers, by your professors, by your priests, by your politicians. You have a head full of all kinds of bullshit, and this head tries to dominate over the heart, which is still beyond the capacity of anybody to distort, to contaminate.

That is the only hope for man -- to listen to the heart and go along with it. Then your life will become a blissful pilgrimage. All the methods of meditation I teach you... in short, it can be said they are nothing but bringing you from the head to the heart, from logic to love, from ego to egolessness, from your separation to a deep merging and melting with the whole.

The whole knows better -- and the whole knows nothing of your ideals, the whole knows nothing about your moralities and conceptions of right and wrong. But the miracle is, the moment you merge with the whole, everything is right and everything is good and everything is beautiful.

Satyam, shivam, sundram.
It is true, it is divine, and it has a beauty that is not of this earth.

Navyo, you are also stating... What I said just yesterday to Shantideva, "Don't ask so many questions, otherwise you will have dengue fever..." You have got dengue fever. You are saying, "I have a feeling that my body makes me aware of it reacting with high fever." It is not high fever, it is simply dengue fever. It will go within two days, so don't be worried. It is bound to happen in this city of Poona, where the mosquitoes must be at least twenty times more than the people -- and not small mosquitoes, Maharashtrian mosquitoes, very stubborn!

I am reminded... I was staying with one of the Buddhist monks, one of the most learned in India, Bikkshu Jagdish Kashyap, in Sarnath. There were so many mosquitoes that even in the daytime we were sitting inside the mosquito net. He would sit in his mosquito net; I would sit in my mosquito net. I asked him, "Jagdish Kashyap, do you know why Buddha never came again to Sarnath? It is a strange thing that Sarnath is the only place where Buddha visited only once and stayed only one day...."

He visited Vaishali twenty times, and hundreds of towns he visited dozens of times. In forty-two years of continuous preaching he was always on the move, but no one has ever wondered in the whole of history, why he did not come to Sarnath again.
Jagdish Kashyap told me, "I am a great scholar of Buddhist scriptures, but I cannot answer your question. How can you find such strange questions?"

I said, "Write down in your scriptures that Buddha never came back to Sarnath because he had no mosquito net!"
And when I came to Poona, I realized the mosquito net is far more necessary in this religious, cultured city. You can see all around -- even in such a hall you have to put up the mosquito netting. I have looked at the mosquitoes; they are bigger than the mosquitoes of Sarnath. Don't be worried about the dengue fever, it will go.

Source - Osho Book "Satyam Shivam Sundram"

lonestar

03-05-2012, 09:38 PM

im back to being a few pages behind on this thread but i have some more questions. lol

are you married? i know osho is not crazy about marriage and i can understand where he's coming from, but i would probably not be alive right now typing this if it wasn't for my wife trying to keep me on a tight leash all these years. :D

here's a funny story. a few weeks ago we had some married couples over at our home and someone asked me what i would do if i won the lottery. i said that i would start a self sustaining commune out in the middle of nowhere in west texas. i thought everyone would just laugh at me but this ended up causing much drama. lol because one husband said that he would join the commune but his wive said no way! and one wife said that she would like to join and her husband got all upset and said he would never leave the city! lol the more ideas we had about this commune the more upset the other wife and husband became and we had to drop the subject!lol

heartbeatsalute

03-05-2012, 10:26 PM

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE AND TASK OF THE NEW UNIVERSITY OF MYSTICISM?

Mysticism is one of the forgotten languages. It has to be revived, because in forgetting the language
of the mystics, life has lost all color, all joy, all music.

Turgenev has a beautiful story: In a village a man comes to a sage and says to him, ”Please help me.
My whole village, and the surrounding villages too, think that I am an idiot. Whatever I say, however
reasonable or rational it may be, they make a laughingstock of me. It has become a nightmare to me.

If I remain silent, they condemn my silence saying, ‘What else can he do? He is such an idiot, he
cannot say anything.’ If I say anything, everybody is there to laugh. My life has become so miserable
that I feel to commit suicide. I heard that a great sage is passing by and I thought perhaps you can
help me.”

The sage said, ”It is a very simple matter. Just do one thing: from tomorrow morning, whenever
anybody says anything, immediately criticize it. Somebody says, ‘Look, what a beautiful sunrise.’

You say, ‘What beauty is in it? Who says? And what is the proof, and what do you mean by beauty?
Define what beauty is. On what authority are you calling the sunrise beautiful? It is not.’

”Somebody says, ‘Look, a beautiful woman is passing’ – condemn. Just remember one thing: don’t
assert anything on your own part. Only criticize, and particularly those things which cannot be
proved – beauty, love, truth, God – things which everybody is talking about but nobody can prove,
nobody can even define. And I will be coming back after one month. Then meet me.”

After one month the man was totally changed. He had gone through a transformation. He was not
looking sad. He was looking radiant, full of authority – as if suddenly he had roots, had become
grounded.

The sage laughed and he said, ”So it worked?”

He said, ”It worked tremendously. Now they all think I am the wisest man, just in one month. And
they are making apologies that they used to think me an idiot; they are feeling very sorry for it. And
I have not done anything other than what you suggested to me. I have not missed a single chance:
anything, and I will pose a question and they cannot answer it. They feel embarrassed. Wherever I
go people fall silent, they don’t talk, because even to say a word is dangerous. But they have started
worshipping me, touching my feet; I have become a sage. You have done a miracle.”

The sage said, ”I have not done a miracle. This is a simple phenomenon: whatsoever is valuable in
life is unexplainable, indefinable, and whatsoever is definable is worthless.”
One of the greatest thinkers of this age, G.E. Moore, has written a book, PRINCIPIA ETHICA, and
he deals only with one question in the whole book. The question is: What is good? – and it is
the most fundamental question. You are talking about morality, you are talking about character, you
are talking about goodness, badness, virtue, sin – they all basically need a clear-cut definition of
what good is. In two hundred and fifty pages of very arduous, logical reasoning, approaching the
question from every possible angle, he comes to the conclusion that good is indefinable. It took
him two hundred and fifty pages – one of the best minds of our century – to figure out that good is
indefinable. You can feel it, you can be it, you can live it, you can taste it, you can experience it, but
you cannot explain it. As far as definitions are concerned, it is beyond definition.

There are thousands of books written by great philosophers in an effort to define beauty. The effort is
as old as man himself, because even the first man must have felt beauty. It is impossible to conceive
that the first man did not feel that the roses are beautiful, that the lotus flower is beautiful, that the
starry night is beautiful, that the full moon is beautiful, that silent eyes are beautiful, that the face of
a buddha is beautiful. It is impossible to conceive that the first man was not aware of beauty. But
thousands of years, thousands of efforts of aestheticians, philosophers, poets, painters – all have
failed to define a simple phenomenon which everybody experiences. It is not something that only
very unqiue individuals experience; it is experienced by everybody in some way or other... such a
vast and common experience.

But then the question arises – what is it? When you try to pinpoint it, suddenly it disappears. You
know it, but you cannot say.
A beautiful incident in Rabindranath Tagore’s life....

He used to on his houseboat go deep into the rivers in the lonely silences of the forest. One full
moon night, he was on his houseboat reading a book on beauty by a great philosopher... and they
all start with great enthusiasm, as if they are going to define. And as you go deeper into the book the
enthusiasm starts disappearing and you can start feeling their embarrassment that they have taken
on a task which is intrinsically impossible. And as he closed the book, coming to the conclusion that
beauty is indefinable.... He was reading the book in the candlelight, and because of the candlelight,
the light of the moon had not entered through the windows of his cabin. He blew out the candle, he
was going to bed, and suddenly from everywhere the moonlight came in, dancing.

He said, ”My God, what a fool I am. Beauty is standing at the door, almost knocking! I am blinded
by a small candle, and I am so much absorbed in reading the book – which is nothing but empty
words, which leads nowhere but into the desert of indefinability.”

He opened all the windows, all the doors, and came out on the deck of the boat. He had seen many
beautiful nights, many beautiful full moons, but he had never seen such beauty, such silence. On
the river, it was all silver of the moon. He remained silent, almost moonstruck.

In many languages the word ‘moonstruck’ means madman. And certainly if you open your heart to
the moon, it is maddening; it is so immensely beautiful that your mind stops its chattering – you fall
into a silence which we call meditation.

He wrote in his diary that night, ”The beauty can be seen, can be felt, can be experienced; it can
drive you mad, but you cannot define it. And I decide from today not to read any book which is an
effort to define beauty, because no book can do it.”

Mysticism is simply to bring into your life all those dimensions which are indefinable, and make you
courageous enough to accept them, knowing perfectly well that definition is not possible, that reason
is impotent.

Just because idiots have been asking questions – How?... Why? – slowly slowly the whole of
humanity has dropped all those things about which they cannot give explanations. Life has become
very mundane, profane; it has lost its sacredness, its divinity. It has lost its god.

To me, god is not a person. God is simply a symbol, symbolizing all those values which are
indefinable – available to experience, but not available to reason; available to the heart, but not
available to the mind.

This adventure of creating a university of mysticism is to bring all those values back to humanity.

This is not going to be an ordinary university. It is not going to teach all those subjects which are
available to reason. It is going to help you to open yourself to all that which cannot be taught. It
will not have teachers, it will only have openers, masters. It will not be situated in a certain place,
it will have schools all over the world – I’m calling them mystery schools. All those mystery schools
together will be the university of mysticism.

In true spirit it will be universal. A university has to be universal.
And its function is totally different: it is not going to teach you chemistry and physics, science and
commerce and arts – all that is done already by thousands of universities, and it is all worthless.

This I can say because I have been a student in the universities, a professor in the universities; on
my own authority I can say that they are engaged in mundane things. They create engineers, they
create doctors, they create technicians. They are all needed. But they don’t create poets; they kill
the poets. They don’t create mystics. They destroy the very roots on which a mystic can grow.

The university of mysticism will be concerned only with the supra-rational, that which is beyond the
mind. And there is so much beyond the mind that if it is not made available to you, your situation is
such as it happened in the second world war...

A small airplane was left in the jungles of Burma when Japan was defeated; the Japanese left it
there. The aboriginals who lived in the forest found it. They were really very curious, excited – what
is it? But seeing the wheels... they figured out that it is a kind of bullock cart, but some idiotic people
have made it because this is not the way bullock carts are made. They started using that airplane,
small airplane, as a bullock cart. Just by chance a man, a hunter, saw them; he could not believe
his eyes – an airplane being used as a bullock cart!
He asked them, ”Have you made it?”

They said, ”No, we are not such idiots, why should we make it? We have found it. But we are
enjoying it.”

The hunter was from a nearby village where he had seen buses, cars. He said, ”It seems to be a
kind of car. It is not a bullock cart. You just wait; I will bring one of my friends who knows something
about buses.” He used to work for a bus transport service. So they brought some petrol, and it did
work like a small bus.

And the people thought it was hilarious. They said, ”So we were wrong, it is not a bullock cart; it is
a bus. Great idea!” They enjoyed it.

And then the mechanic who had come said, ”I don’t know much about airplanes, but as far as I can
see it is not a bus. I have seen airplanes only in the air. My village is small.

Buses come up to
my village and I have worked on the buses so I can help with this airplane – but this is an airplane
because you can see the wings. I know a man in the city – I will find him and I will bring him – who
knows about airplanes.”

And the man from the city came and he said, ”What nonsense is this? You are using a beautiful
airplane as a bus, and that too in the jungle where there is no road, nothing.

You are just dragging
it through muddy roads. It can fly.”
The aboriginals said, ”It can fly? Is it a bird?”

He said, ”It is a bird – have you not seen steel birds flying?”
They said, ”We have seen, but we have never seen them on the earth.”
The man managed... he took a few aboriginals with him and the airplane functioned as it was
supposed to function – it started flying. And the whole village was dancing, beating their drums,
singing, ”This is great! A bullock cart flying!”

Man is not just a mundane physical, material phenomenon. He is not just a bullock cart, but that’s
how we are using him. We are all using ourselves as bullock carts. We can be buses – Suraj
Prakash can help, he knows transport! – but we are not buses either.
We are airplanes. I can help you to fly.

Man can exist on many levels. There are levels and levels above.

Mysticism simply means....
You are not using your potential in its totality; you are using it only partially, a very small part, a
fragment. And if you are not using your potential in its totality, you will never feel fulfilled. That is the
misery, that is the cause of anguish.

You are born to be mystics. Unless you are a mystic, unless you have come to know existence as
a mystery – beyond words, beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond mind – you have not taken the
challenge of life, you have been a coward. You have wings, but you have forgotten it.

The University of Mysticism is to remind man about the wings that he has. He can fly, and the whole
sky is his.

OSHO UPANISHADS, OSHO[/B]

heartbeatsalute

03-05-2012, 10:33 PM

im back to being a few pages behind on this thread but i have some more questions. lol

are you married? i know osho is not crazy about marriage and i can understand where he's coming from, but i would probably not be alive right now typing this if it wasn't for my wife trying to keep me on a tight leash all these years. :D

here's a funny story. a few weeks ago we had some married couples over at our home and someone asked me what i would do if i won the lottery. i said that i would start a self sustaining commune out in the middle of nowhere in west texas. i thought everyone would just laugh at me but this ended up causing much drama. lol because one husband said that he would join the commune but his wive said no way! and one wife said that she would like to join and her husband got all upset and said he would never leave the city! lol the more ideas we had about this commune the more upset the other wife and husband became and we had to drop the subject!lol

yes, married, with a daughter who is married who lives abroad with her husband, and likes Osho.

Osho always tells people to go alone, to the commune, jealousy and insecurity always come up in married couples.

There are a lot of guys who can tell about their experience, with their couple.

There are a lot of sannyasins who arer married, were so before they knew about Osho,
and live with their husbands or wives in India, or in their own country. No big deal. :D

EDIT: I WAS INVITED TO AN INDIAN MARRIAGE CEREMONY, WheN I WAS There ,WAS BEAUTIFUL,
and it lasted for 5 days! :D

Question: Would you talk to us about our living partners -- our Wives, husbands and lovers. When should we persevere with a partner, and when Should we abandon a relationship as hopeless -- or even Destructive?

Osho : Relationship is one of the mysteries. And because it exists between two persons, it depends on both. Whenever two persons meet, a new world is created. Just by their meeting, a new phenomenon comes into existence -- which was not before, which never existed before. And through that new phenomenon, both persons are changed and transformed. Unrelated, you are one thing; related, immediately you become something else. A new thing has happened. A woman when she becomes a lover is no longer the same woman.

A man when he becomes a father is no longer the same man. A child is born, but we miss one point completely; the moment the child is born, the mother is also born. This never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother never. And a mother is something absolutely new. Relationship is created by you, but then, in its turn, relationship creates you. Two persons meet, that means two worlds meet. It is not a simple thing but very complex, the most complex.

Each person is a world unto himself or herself, a complex mystery with a long past and an eternal future. In the beginning only peripheries meet. But if the relationship grows intimate, becomes closer, becomes deeper, then by and by centers start meeting. When centers meet, it is called love. When peripheries meet, it is acquaintance. You touch the person from the without, just from the boundary, then it is acquaintance. Many times you start calling your acquaintance your love. Then you are in a fallacy. Acquaintance is not love.

Love is very rare. To meet a person at his center is to pass through a revolution yourself, because if you want to meet a person at his center, you will have to allow that person to reach to your center also. You will have to become vulnerable, absolutely vulnerable, open. It is risky. To allow somebody to reach your center is risky, dangerous, because you never know what that person will do to you. And once all your secrets are known, once your hiddenness has become unhidden, once you are exposed completely, what that other person will do, you never know. The fear is there. That's why we never open.

Just acquaintance, and we think that love has happened. Peripheries meet, and we think we have met. You are not your periphery. Really, the periphery is the boundary where you end, just the fencing around you. It is not you! The periphery is the place where you end and the world begins. Even husbands and wives who may have lived together for many years may be just acquaintances. They may not have known each other. And the more you live with someone, the more you forget completely that the centers have remained unknown.

So the first thing to be understood is: don't take acquaintance as love. You may be making love, you may be sexually related, but sex is also peripheral. Unless centers meet, sex is just a meeting of two bodies. And a meeting of two bodies is not your meeting. Sex also remains acquaintance --physical, bodily, but still acquaintance. You can allow somebody to enter to your center only when you are not afraid, when you are not fearful. So I say to you that there are two types of living. One: fear-oriented; one: love-oriented.

Fear-oriented living can never lead you into deep relationship. You remain afraid, and the other cannot be allowed, cannot be allowed to penetrate you to your very core. To an extent you allow the other and then the wall comes and everything stops. The love-oriented person is the religious person. The love-oriented person means one who is not afraid of the future, one who is not afraid of the result and the consequence, who lives here and now. Don't be bothered about the result. That is the fear-oriented mind. Don't think about what will happen out of it.

Just be here, and act totally. Don't calculate. A fear-oriented man is always calculating, planning, arranging, safeguarding. His whole life is lost in this way.

I have heard about an old Zen monk. He was on his deathbed. The last day had come, and he declared that that evening he would be no more. So followers, disciples, friends started coming. He had many lovers. They all started coming. From far and wide people gathered. One of his old disciples, when he heard that the master was going to die, ran to the market.

Somebody asked: The master is dying in his hut, why are you going to the market?
The old disciple said: I know that my master loves a particular type of cake, so Iam going to purchase the cake.

It was difficult to find the cake, because now it had gone out of fashion, but by the evening somehow he managed. He came running with the cake. And everybody was worried -- it was as if the master was waiting for someone. He would open his eyes and look, and close his eyes again.

And when this disciple came, he said: Okay, so you have come. Where is the cake? The disciple produced the cake -- and he was very happy that the master asked about the cake. Dying, the master took the cake in his hand, but his hand was not trembling. He was very old, but his hand was not trembling. So somebody asked: You are so old and just on the verge of dying. The last breath is soon to leave you, but your hand is not trembling.

The master said: I never tremble, because there is no fear. My body has become old, but I am still young, and I will remain young even when the body is gone. Then he took a bite, started munching the cake. And then somebody asked: What is your last message, Master? You will be leaving us soon. What do you want us to remember?

The master smiled and said: Ah, this cake is delicious.

This is a man who lives in the here and now: This cake is delicious. Even death is irrelevant. The next moment is meaningless. THIS moment this cake is delicious. If you can be in this moment, this present moment, this presentness, the plenitude, then only can you love.

Love is a rare flowering. It happens only sometimes. Millions and millions of people live in the false attitude that they are lovers. They believe that they love, but that is their belief only. Love is a rare flowering. Sometimes it happens. It is rare because it can happen only when there is no fear, never before. That means love can happen only to a very deeply spiritual, religious person. Sex is possible for all. Acquaintance is possible for all. Not love. When you are not afraid, then there is nothing to hide, then you can be open, then you can withdraw all boundaries. And then you can invite the other to penetrate you to the very core.

And remember, if you allow somebody to penetrate you deeply, the other will allow you to penetrate into himself or herself, because when you allow somebody to penetrate you, trust is created. When you are not afraid, the other becomes fearless. In your love, fear is always there. The husband is afraid of the wife, the wife is afraid of the husband. Lovers are always afraid. Then it is not love. Then it is just an arrangement of two fearful persons depending on each other, fighting, exploiting, manipulating, controlling, dominating, possessing -- but it is not love.

If you can allow love to happen, there is no need for prayer, there is no need for meditation, there is no need for any church, any temple. You can completely forget God if you can love -- because through love, everything will have happened to you: meditation, prayer, God. EVERYTHING will have happened to you. That's what Jesus means when he says: Love is God. But love is difficult. Fear has to be dropped. And this is the strange thing, that you are so afraid and you have nothing to lose.

Kabir has said somewhere: I look into people. They are so much afraid, but I can't see why -- because they have nothing to lose. Says Kabir: They are like a person who is naked, but never goes to take a bath in the river because he is afraid -- where will he dry his clothes? This is the situation you are in -- naked, with no clothes, but always afraid about the clothes. What have you got to lose? Nothing. This body will be taken by death. Before it is taken by death, give it to love. Whatsoever you have will be taken away.

Before it is taken away, why not share it? That is the Only way of possessing it. If you can share and give, you are the master. It is going to be taken away. There is nothing which you can retain forever. Death will destroy everything. So, if you follow me rightly, the struggle is between death and love. If you can give, there will be no death. Before anything can be taken away from you, you will have already given it, you will have made it a gift. There can be no death. For a lover there is no death.

For a non-lover, every moment is a death, because every moment something is being snatched away from him. The body is disappearing, he is losing every moment. And then there will be death, and everything will be annihilated. What is the fear? Why are you so afraid? Even if everything is known about you and you are an open book, why fear? How can it harm you? Just false conceptions, just conditionings given by the society, that you have to hide, that you have to protect yourself, that you have to be constantly in a fighting mood, that everybody is an enemy, that everybody is against you.

Nobody is against you! Even if you feel somebody is against you, he too is not against you -- because everybody is concerned with himself, not with you. There is nothing to fear. This has to be realized before a real relationship can happen. There is nothing to fear. Meditate on it. And then allow the other to enter you, invite the other to enter you. Don't create any barrier anywhere, become a passage always open, no locks, no doors on you, no closed doors on you. Then love is possible.

When two centers meet, there is love. And love is an alchemical phenomenon -- just like hydrogen and oxygen meet and a new thing, water, is created. You can have hydrogen, you can have oxygen, but if you are thirsty, they will be useless. You can have as much oxygen as you want, as much hydrogen as you like, but the thirst will not go. When two centers meet a new thing is created. That new thing is love. And it is just like water, the thirst of many, many lives is satisfied. Suddenly you become content. That is the visible sign of love; you become content, as if you have achieved everything. There is nothing to achieve now; You have reached the goal.

There is no further goal, destiny is fulfilled. The seed has become a flower, has come to its total flowering. Deep contentment is the visible sign of love. Whenever a person is in love, he is in deep contentment. Love cannot be seen, but contentment, the deep satisfaction around him...his every breath, his every movement, his very being -- content. You may be surprised when I say to you that love makes you desireless, but desire is with discontent. You desire because you don't have. You desire because you think if you have something it will give you contentment.

Desire is out of discontent. When there is love and two centers have met and dissolved and merged, and a new alchemical quality is born, contentment is there. It is as if the whole existence has stopped -- no movement. Then the present moment is the only moment. And then you can say: Ah, this cake is delicious. Even death doesn't mean anything to a man who is in love. So I say to you, love will make you desireless. Be fearless, drop fears, be open. Allow some center to meet the center within you. you will be reborn through it, a new quality of being will be created.

This quality of being says: This is god. God is not an argument, it is a fulfillment, a feeling of fulfillment. You may have observed that whenever you are discontent, you want to deny God. Whenever you are dissatisfied, your whole being wants to say: There is no God. Atheism is not out of logic, it is out of discontent. You may rationalize it -- that's another thing. You may not say you are an atheist because you are discontent. You may say: There is no God and I have got proofs. But that is not the true thing.

If you are satisfied, suddenly your whole being says: THERE is god. Suddenly you feel it! The whole existence becomes divine. If love is there you will be really for the first time in the feeling that existence is divine and everything is a blessing. But much has to be done before this can happen. Much has to be destroyed before this can happen. You have to destroy all that creates barriers in you.

Make love a SADHANA, an inner discipline. Don't allow it just to be a frivolous thing. Don't allow it just to be an occupation of the mind. Don't allow it just to be a bodily satisfaction. Make it an inner search, and take the other as a help, as a friend. If you have heard anything about Tantra, you will know that Tantra says: If you can find a consort, a friend, a woman or a man, who is ready to move with you towards the inner center, who is ready to move with you to the highest peak of relationship, then this relationship will become meditative.

Then through this relationship you will achieve the ultimate relationship. Then the other becomes just a door. Let me explain it: if you love a person, by and by first the periphery of the person disappears, the form of the person disappears. You come more and more in contact with the formless, the inner. The form becomes, by and by, vague and disappears. And if you go deeper, then even this formless individual starts disappearing and melting. Then the beyond opens. Then that particular individual was just a door, an opening.

And through your lover, you find the divine. Because we cannot love, we need so many religious rituals. They are substitutes, and very poor substitutes. A Meera needs no temple to go to. The whole existence is her temple. She can dance before a tree and the tree becomes Krishna. She can sing before a bird and the bird becomes Krishna. She creates her Krishna around her everywhere. Her love is such that wherever she looks the door opens and the Krishna is revealed, the beloved is revealed.

But the first glimpse will always come through an individual. It is difficult to be in contact with the universal. It is so big, so vast, so beginningless, endless. From where to start? From where to move into it? The individual is the door. Fall in love. And don't make it a struggle. Make it a deep allowance for the other, just an invitation. And allow the other to penetrate you without any conditions. And suddenly the other disappears and God is there. If your lover or beloved cannot become divine, then nothing in this world can become divine. Then all your religious talk is just nonsense. This can happen with a child. This can happen with an animal, your dog.

If you can be in deep relationship with a dog, it can happen -- the dog becomes divine! So it is not a question of man and woman only. That is one of the deepest sources of the divine and it reaches you naturally, but it can happen from anywhere. The basic key is this: you should allow the other to penetrate you to your very deepest core, to the very ground of your being. But we go on deceiving ourselves. We think we love. And if you think that you love, then there is no possibility for love to happen -- because if this is love, then everything is closed.

Make fresh efforts. Try to find in the other the real being that is hidden. Don't take anybody for granted. Every individual is such a mystery that if you go on and on into him it is endless. But we get bored with the other -- because just the periphery, and always the periphery. I was reading a story: A man was very ill and he tried all types of "pathies," but nothing would help. Then he went to a hypnotist and the hypnotist gave him a mantra, to repeat continuously: I am not ill.

For at least fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes at night: I am not ill, I am healthy. And the whole day, whenever you remember, repeat it. Within a few days he started getting better. And within weeks he was absolutely okay. Then he told his wife: This has been a miracle! Should I go to this hypnotist for another miracle also? Because lately I am feeling no sexual appetite and the sexual relationship has almost stopped. There is no desire.

The wife was happy. She said: You go -- because she was feeling very frustrated. The man went to the hypnotist. He came back, his wife asked: What mantra, what suggestion now has he given? The man wouldn't tell her. But within weeks his sexual appetite started returning. He started feeling desire again. So the wife was very much puzzled.

She continuously persisted in asking, but the man would laugh and would not say anything. So one day she tried, when he was in the bathroom in the morning doing his meditation, that fifteen-minute mantra, she tried to hear what he was saying. And he was saying: She is not my wife. She is not my wife. She is not my wife.

We take persons for granted. Somebody is your wife -- relationship is finished. Somebody is your husband -- relationship is finished. Now there is no adventure, the other has become a thing, a commodity. The other is not now a mystery to be searched the other is no longer new.

Remember, everything goes dead with age. The periphery is always old, and the center is always new. The periphery cannot remain new, because every moment it is getting old, stale. The center is always fresh and young. Your soul is neither a child, nor a young man, nor an old man. Your soul is simply eternally fresh. It has no age. You can experiment with it: you may be young, you may be old, just close your eyes and find out. Try to feel how your center is -- old? young? You will feel that the center is neither.

It is always new, it never gets old. Why? Because the center doesn't belong to time. In the process of time, everything becomes old. A man is born -- the body has started becoming old already! When we say that a child is one week old, it means one week of oldness has penetrated into the child. The child has already passed seven days towards death, he has completed seven days of dying. He is moving towards death -- sooner or later he will be dead. Whatsoever comes in time becomes old. The moment it enters time, it is already becoming old.

Your body is old, your periphery is old. You cannot be eternally in love with it. But your center is always fresh, it is eternally young. Once you are in contact with it, love is an every-moment discovery. And then the honeymoon never ends. If it ends it was not a honeymoon at all -- it was just an acquaintance. And the last thing to remember is: in the relationship of love you always blame the other if something goes wrong. If something is not happening as it should, the other is responsible. This will destroy the whole possibility of future growth.

Remember: you are always responsible, and change yourself. Drop those qualities which create trouble. Make love a self-transformation. As they say in salesmen's courses: The customer is always right. I would like to say to you: In the world of relationship and love, you are always in the wrong, the other is always right. And this is how lovers always feel. If there is love, they always feel: Something is wrong with me if things are not happening as they should. And both feel the same way! Then things grow, then centers open, then boundaries merge.

But if you think that the other is wrong, you are closing yourself and the other. And the other also thinks that you are wrong. Thoughts are infectious. If you think the other is wrong even if you have not said it, even if you are smiling and showing that you don't think the other is wrong -- the other has got the point -- through your eyes, through your gestures, through your face. Even if you are an actor, a great actor, and you can just arrange your face, your gestures as you like, then too the unconscious is continuously sending signals: You are wrong.

And when you say that the other is wrong, the other starts feeling that you are wrong. Relationship is destroyed on this rock, and then people become closed. If you say somebody is wrong, somebody starts protecting, safeguarding. Then closure happens.

Remember always: in love, you are always wrong. And then the possibility will open and the other will also feel the same. We create the feeling in the other. When lovers are close, immediately thoughts go jumping from one to the other. Even if they are not saying anything, they are silent, they communicate. Language is for non-lovers, those who are not in love. For lovers, silence is enough language. Without saying anything, they go on speaking. If you take love as sadhana, then don't say the other is wrong.

Just try to find out: somewhere, something must be wrong in you, and drop that wrongness. It is going to be difficult because it is going to be against the ego. It is going to be difficult because it will hurt your pride. It is going to be difficult because this will not be dominating, possessing. You will not be more powerful through possessing the other. This will destroy your ego -- that's why it is going to be difficult.

But destruction of the ego is the point, the goal. From wherever you like to approach the inner world -- from love, from meditation, from yoga, from prayer -- whatsoever the path you choose, the goal is the same: the destruction of the ego, throwing the ego away. Through love it can be done very easily. And it is so natural! Love is the natural religion.

MY WAY ,THE WAY OF THE WHITE CLOUDS, OSHO

heartbeatsalute

03-05-2012, 11:48 PM

I Don’t Teach You Optimism – I Teach You Transcendence

"I don’t teach you optimism. In the West it is very fashionable nowadays; it is called “positive thinking.” That is a new name for optimism; the old name has become a little too out of fashion, out-of-date. The new name is positive thinking. I don’t teach you positive thinking, because positive thinking carries the negative in its wake.

"I teach you transcendence – neither positive nor negative. Be a watcher: witness both. When there is day, witness the day, and when there is night, witness the night – and don’t get identified with either. You are neither the day nor the night; you are the transcendental consciousness. Become more and more centered there in that transcendence.
"True religion is not positive, nor is it negative. It is neither via negativa nor via positiva; it is via transcendence."

Osho, The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 4, Talk #2

lonestar

04-05-2012, 04:10 AM

yes, married, with a daughter who is married who lives abroad with her husband, and likes Osho.

Osho always tells people to go alone, to the commune, jealousy and insecurity always come up in married couples.

There are a lot of guys who can tell about their experience, with their couple.

There are a lot of sannyasins who arer married, were so before they knew about Osho,
and live with their husbands or wives in India, or in their own country. No big deal. :D

EDIT: I WAS INVITED TO AN INDIAN MARRIAGE CEREMONY, WheN I WAS There ,WAS BEAUTIFUL,
and it lasted for 5 days! :D

that post was BEAUTIFUL. :)

heartbeatsalute

04-05-2012, 05:59 AM

that post was BEAUTIFUL. :)

:D:)

heartbeatsalute

04-05-2012, 06:29 AM

http://a404.idata.over-blog.com/1/48/60/93/osho1037-resize.jpg

There is no final destination

30 October 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ONCE, WHEN KINGYU SAW RINZAI COMING TO HIS MONASTERY, HE SAT IN HIS ROOM
HOLDING HIS STICK CROSSWISE. RINZAI STRUCK THE STICK THREE TIMES WITH HIS
HAND, THEN ENTERED THE MONK’S HALL AND SAT DOWN IN THE FIRST SEAT.
KINGYU CAME IN, SAWRINZAI, AND SAID, ”IN AN ENCOUNTER BETWEEN HOST AND GUEST,
EACH SHOULD OBSERVE THE CUSTOMARY FORMALITIES. WHERE ARE YOU FROM, AND
WHY ARE YOU SO RUDE?”

”WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, OLD OSHO?” ANSWERED RINZAI.
AS KINGYU WAS ABOUT TO OPEN HIS MOUTH TO REPLY, RINZAI STRUCK HIM. KINGYU
PRETENDED TO FALL DOWN. RINZAI HIT HIM AGAIN. KINGYU SAID, ”TODAY THINGS WERE
NOT TO MY ADVANTAGE.”

AT A LATER TIME, ISAN ASKED KYOZAN, ”IN THE CASE OF THESE TWO VENERABLE ONES,
WAS EITHER THE WINNER OR LOSER?”
KYOZAN SAID, ”WHEN ONE WINS, ONE WINS UNCONDITIONALLY. WHEN ONE LOSES, ONE
LOSES UNCONDITIONALLY.”

Maneesha, the anecdote that you have brought can be understood only if you understand Zen’s
position about conditionality. In our lives everything is conditioned – conditioned by circumstances,
conditioned by traditions. When I say everything is conditioned, I mean nothing is yours; everything
has come to you from the outside. You are just a gathering point. On your own you are nothing, you
are utterly empty.

Zen wants you to approach life unconditionally. That means without any prejudice, without any
precondition, without any expectation. You can be total only if you are standing at your very center.
You love, but your love is conditional. You have friends but your friends are conditional. Just a small
change in circumstances and the lovers become enemies and the friends are no more friends.

Machiavelli had a great insight when he wrote the book THE PRINCE. Although it is a book of
diplomacy and has nothing to do with religion, there are insights which can help you to understand.

Machiavelli says, ”A king should never tell to his friend what he cannot tell to the enemy, because no
one knows: who is a friend today may be an enemy tomorrow, and who is an enemy today may be
a friend tomorrow.” He is laying down a diplomatic policy – but our whole life is diplomatic. We say
things because the listener will appreciate them; then it has become conditional. To say the truth we
don’t have to consider at all whether it will be liked or not.

Gurdjieff used to teach his disciples unconditionality as a basic principle for finding the truth. If
you put any conditions, those conditions will be the barriers, and what are all your religions except
conditions?

When a follower of Krishna or a follower of Christ sits for meditation, his desire is to see Krishna – he
is expecting existence to be according to his desire – and the Christian is asking for Christ. Because
of their conditioned minds it is possible Hindus may see Krishna. The Christian will not see Krishna
and the Hindu will not see Christ; they will see according to their conditions.

They will see their own
conditions in a kind of hallucination, and they will feel immensely joyous that they have realized God.

All your so-called saints are simply psychopaths. They don’t understand that the basic foundation
of finding the truth is to first clean your mind of all conditions. Approach existence absolutely empty.
Allow existence to say something. Don’t ask.

That’s where Zen comes to be the highest kind of religiousness. Just compare it to Jesus’ saying to
his followers, ”Ask and it shall be given unto you” – but ask. What you can ask will be some desire,
some longing, some passion, some greed. What can you ask? – and existence has no obligation to
fulfill your asking.

Jesus goes on by saying, ”Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you.” It seems as if existence
is closed; unless you knock, the doors will not be opened.

The truth is, existence has no doors, so where are you going to knock? And existence is every
moment available; your doors are closed. Are you going to knock on your own doors? And who is
going to open them?

Jesus says, ”Seek and ye shall find.” Beautiful words, and if you don’t understand, then great poetry.
But if you understand, then they are not fundamental statements of a religious consciousness.

A religious consciousness will just change the whole thing into its opposite: seek and you will miss;
don’t seek and you have already found. Knock and you will be knocking in vain, because existence
has no doors; it is in every dimension open. Ask and you will be living in an illusion. It will be given
to you not by existence, but by your own imagination.
Don’t put any condition on existence, don’t put any pressure on existence.

Just be available and
rejoice, whatever comes to you. And existence comes in such abundance to the unconditional
man that it is simply surprising. You had not asked and all the treasures, all the splendors, all the
mysteries, are your own. You were not seeking, and the truth is already there.

You are the truth, the whole seeking is stupid. The more you seek, the farther you will go away from
the truth. So stop seeking – and complete stoppage of desiring, seeking, asking, they are all the
same things. Just remain at your center, available and open, unconditionally, and you have found
that which cannot be said.

In this background you should understand this anecdote.

ONCE, WHEN KINGYU SAW RINZAI COMING TO HIS MONASTERY, HE SAT IN HIS ROOM
HOLDING HIS STICK CROSSWISE. RINZAI STRUCK THE STICK THREE TIMES WITH HIS
HAND, THEN ENTERED THE MONKS’ HALL AND SAT DOWN IN THE FIRST SEAT.

Obviously the first seat belonged to Kingyu; he was the master of the monastery. And this is strange
behavior from a guest, that he knocks first the stick of the master three times, and then, without
saying anything, enters the assembly hall and sits in the place of the master.

KINGYU CAME IN, SAWRINZAI, AND SAID, ”IN AN ENCOUNTER BETWEEN HOST AND GUEST,
EACH SHOULD OBSERVE THE CUSTOMARY FORMALITIES.”

That’s where Rinzai differs, and any great master will differ. Kingyu had many more disciples than
Rinzai, because the masses could understand him more clearly. He was following in a way the
formalities of the masses. He expects Rinzai also...

He says to Rinzai, ”IN AN ENCOUNTER BETWEEN HOST AND GUEST” – he thinks he is the host,
which formally he is, and Rinzai is a guest, which formally he is – ”EACH SHOULD OBSERVE THE
CUSTOMARY FORMALITIES.”

There Rinzai does not agree, and no great master can agree. Traditional formalities? Then what
is Zen all about? It is the revolution against the formal. It is all for the spontaneous, not for the
customary.

”WHERE ARE YOU FROM, AND WHY ARE YOU SO RUDE?”
He is not rude. On the surface he will appear rude to anybody, but he is exactly expressing his
position. When he struck three times on the stick, he told his host, ”Try to understand that a greater
master is here. You are only a formal teacher.”

Those three strikings on the stick show that from now onwards, ”formally, you are the host; but in
existence I am the host, you are the guest.” What is true on the surface is not necessarily true at the
center.
Rinzai is saying, ”A master has come to a disciple.” He has made it clear by striking the stick of
Kingyu that from now onwards, ”While I’m here, I am the master.” He is not being rude, he is simply
being straightforward, and that is the quality of an authentic master.

Kingyu asked him, ”WHERE ARE YOU FROM, AND WHY ARE YOU SO RUDE?” He could not
understand the behavior, although the behavior is clear. The master has struck three times on
Kingyu’s stick, and he is sitting in his seat in the assembly hall.

Rinzai is saying, ”You are a mere teacher, you are not yet a master. Whatever you know is mere
knowledge, it is not your own existential experience.”

”WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, OLD OSHO?” ANSWERED RINZAI. OSHO is a very honorable
word. Just in a single word he has said, ”I have not been rude; I have just declared that I have come
here.”

”WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, OLD OSHO? You are old and you are well respected by me,
but that does not mean that you know the truth. You have strived hard your whole life, you disciplined
yourself, you have been training yourself, but you have not yet got the point. I respect you, your old
age, your lifelong effort.
”I am not rude, but truth has to be said even if it appears to be rude. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING
ABOUT, OLD OSHO?”

By the word ‘osho’ he has made the position clear: ”I am not rude, and I cannot be rude to anybody.
It is really out of compassion that I have struck on your stick, showing you that you don’t deserve to
have it. It should be in my hands. You did not understand, that’s why I had to come to the assembly
hall and sit in the position where you used to sit.
”Obviously you are feeling insulted, but all I am saying is that the moment a real master enters, then
he is always the host, he is never the guest.”

AS KINGYU WAS ABOUT TO OPEN HIS MOUTH TO REPLY, RINZAI STRUCK HIM. He did not
allow him to speak, because it is not a question of speaking, it is not a dialogue.

Try to understand: don’t be bothered about words, but the actual situation. He was going to open
his mouth means he was going to say something. Rinzai struck him to say, ”Don’t say anything, see!

Don’t get lost into explanations, just see the situation, just look into my eyes!”

KINGYU PRETENDED TO FALL DOWN. RINZAI HIT HIM AGAIN – because no pretensions are
allowed in Zen. Either you fall down, not by any effort but as a happening...

You don’t pretend; it is
not a drama.

KINGYU PRETENDED TO FALL DOWN. RINZAI HIT HIM AGAIN. Now this hit is for his pretension
– not only this pretending to fall, but his whole life is a pretension. He is not a master, yet he has
been pretending to be the master.

KINGYU SAID, ”TODAY THINGS WERE NOT TO MY ADVANTAGE.”

That is not the response of one who has understood. He is still thinking in terms of advantage.
He has not understood the meaning of the behavior of Rinzai. He throws the responsibility, like
everybody else in the world, on destiny, on kismet, on the lines of the hand, on the birth chart – all
kinds of stupid excuses. ”What can I do? TODAY THINGS WERE NOT TO MY ADVANTAGE.”

The reality is that Rinzai did too much, gave him again and again opportunities to understand –
which would have been one of the greatest days in his life – that a master has walked down from his
hill to his monastery, uninvited, and tried to wake him up. But he is thinking of advantages....

AT A LATER TIME, ISAN ASKED KYOZAN, ”IN THE CASE OF THESE TWO VENERABLE ONES,
WAS EITHER THE WINNER OR LOSER?”

This was asked century after century in Zen: ”What happened that day? Who was the winner and
who was the loser?”

AT A LATER TIME, ISAN ASKED KYOZAN – both great masters – ”IN THE CASE OF THESE TWO
VENERABLE ONES, WAS EITHER THE WINNER OR LOSER?” KYOZAN SAID, ”WHEN ONE
WINS, ONE WINS UNCONDITIONALLY. WHEN ONE LOSES, ONE LOSES UNCONDITIONALLY.”

This is such a profound statement; it means the question of being a winner or loser is meaningless.

The point is, whatever happens it should be unconditional, it should be spontaneous. To be a failure
spontaneously is as valuable as to be victorious. The real value is in spontaneity, in unconditionality.

If you fail, you accept your failure unconditionally, with joy. That’s a gift of nature. One never knows,
even a dark night may turn into a beautiful dawn. You should not start having opinions about who
has won and who has lost. Both the participants in a Zen encounter should remain spontaneous
whatever happens. The value is in the spontaneity; it has been taken away from victory completely.

Victory is part of a struggling world, a world with conditions, a world with desires. Zen pays no
attention to victory or defeat; they are both meaningless. What is meaningful is spontaneity. It is
possible that the spontaneous one may be defeated and the victorious may not be unconditional. In
the eyes of Zen, the defeated one is at a higher state.

It happened once, a Zen samurai, a Zen warrior, had come home early from the front, and he found
the servant making love to his wife.

Being a man of Zen, he said to the servant, ”Don’t be worried, just finish your job. I am waiting
outside. You will have to take a sword in your hand and fight with me. It is perfectly okay whatever is
happening. I am waiting outside.”

This poor servant started trembling. He does not even know how to hold a sword, and his master is
a famous warrior; he will chop off his head in a single blow.

So he ran from the back door to the Zen master who was also the master of the warrior. He said to
the master, ”I have got into trouble. It is all my fault, but it has happened.”

The master listened to his story and he said, ”There is no need to be worried. I will teach you how
to hold the sword, and I will also tell you that it does not matter that your master is a great warrior.

All that matters is spontaneity. And in spontaneity you will be the better, because he seems to be
confident: there is no question of this servant surviving; it will be almost like a cat playing with a rat.

”So don’t be worried. Be total, and hit him hard, because this is your only chance of living, survival.

So don’t be half-hearted, don’t be conditional, thinking that perhaps he may forgive you. He will
never forgive you. You will have to fight with him. You have provoked and challenged him. But there
is no problem: as far as I can see, you will end up the winner.”

The servant could not believe it, and the master said, ”You should understand that I am his master
also, and I know that he will behave according to his training. Knowing perfectly well that he is going
to win, he cannot be unconditional – and you have no other alternative than to be unconditional.
Just be total. You don’t know where to hit, how to hit, so hit anywhere. Just go crazy!”

The servant said, ”If you say so, I will do it. In fact there is no chance of my survival, so why not do
it totally!”

Seeing that the time had come, he learned how to hold the sword, and he came back and challenged
his master, ”Now come on!”

The master could not believe it. He was thinking the servant would fall at his feet and cry and weep
and say, ”Just forgive me!”
But instead of that the servant roared like a lion, and he has got a sword from the Zen master. He
recognized the sword, and he said, ”From where did you get it?”

The servant said, ”From your master. Now come, let it be decided once and for all. Either I will
survive or you will survive, but both cannot.”

The master felt a little tremble in his heart, but still he thought, ”How can he manage? It is years’
training.... I have been fighting for years in wars, and this poor servant...” But he had to take out his
sword.

The servant went really crazy. Not knowing where to hit, he was hitting here and there and just...

The samurai was at a loss, because he could fight with any warrior who knew how to fight – but this
man knows nothing and he is doing all kinds of things. The servant pushed him to the wall, and the
master had to ask him, ”Please forgive me. You will kill me. You don’t know how to fight – what are
you doing?”

The servant said, ”It is not a question of doing. It is my last moment; I will do everything with totality.”

The servant became the winner, and the warrior also went to the master and said, ”What miracle
have you done? Within five minutes he became such a great warrior, and he was making such
blows, so stupid that he could have killed me. He knows nothing but he could have killed me. He
pushed me to the wall of my house, his sword on my chest. I had to ask to be forgiven and tell him
that whatever he is doing it is perfectly okay and to continue.”

The master said, ”You have to learn a lesson, that it is finally the totality, the unconditional
absoluteness... whether it brings defeat or victory does not matter. What matters is that the man
was total, and the total man never is defeated. His totality is his victory.”

That’s what Kyozan is saying: ”WHEN ONE WINS, ONE WINS UNCONDITIONALLY.” He does not
take any credit that ”I am the victor”; it is always the unconditional consciousness that is the victor.

”WHEN ONE LOSES, ONE LOSES UNCONDITIONALLY.” There is no question of any defeatism;
there is no question of feeling a failure. He gave his total effort. But if nature wants that the other
should win, it is perfectly okay. ”I have not left anything, I did my best and was total, and I was
absolutely spontaneous. More than that I cannot do.”

So when two warriors fight in Japan – and it happens often, even today – most probably nobody wins
and nobody is defeated, because both are total. Their efforts are so spontaneous that finally they
end up without winning or being defeated. Very rarely is a person defeated, and whoever is defeated,
it is just circumstantial. The victor does not declare himself and his egoism; on the contrary, he
embraces the defeated and he appreciates the way the defeated fought. It was spontaneous and
total, ”and it is just by chance that I am the winner and you are not. It is just by chance. But as far
as your spontaneity and totality are concerned, you are absolutely equal to me.”

This is a very different approach. Victory or defeat are no more the values. A great shift in values
takes place: spontaneity, absoluteness, putting all that you have at the stake, that is valuable.
Whether victory happens or defeat happens, that is not material.
One German professor, Herrigel, was one of the first Western disciples of a Zen master in Japan.

He was learning archery. He was already a great archer in Germany, because there values are
different. He was a great archer because he was always right one hundred percent, his arrow
reaching to the exact middle of the target, the bull’s-eye. In Germany your success will be counted
by the percentage – a hundred percent, ninety percent, eighty percent.

That is the way it is counted
all around the world, except in Japan.

In Japan, when Herrigel had learned archery for years in Germany and had become the champion
archer of Germany, he heard about a different valuation. He went to Japan and remained there
for three years with a master. He could not understand why the master was always saying, ”You
missed” – and his arrow was always reaching exactly to the bull’s- eye.

The master said, ”That is not the point, whether your arrow reaches the bull’s-eye or not. The
point is that you should be spontaneous. Forget about the target. Remember that you should be
spontaneous, you should not make an effort.”

Three years passed, but the German professor, Herrigel, could not understand what this man was
talking about. Every day he would try, and the master would say, ”No!”

Finally he decided to go back: ”This is useless, wasting time!” He could not understand what this
spontaneity is. He could not understand how you can be spontaneous when you are an archer. You
have to take the bow in your hand, you have to aim, you have to be exact so that your arrow reaches
to the point – how can you be without effort? Some effort is absolutely needed. And you will agree
that he was not wrong.

But Zen will not agree. The Zen master continued working, without getting bored or fed up that three
years have passed and this man cannot relax.

Herrigel told him after three years, ”Tomorrow I have to leave. I’m sorry that I could not understand. I
still carry the idea that I am one hundred percent right, so how can you say that I don’t know archery
at all?”

So the next day, early in the morning, he went to see the master for the last time. The master was
teaching somebody else, so he sat there on the bench and just looked. For the first time he was
not concerned; he was going, he had dropped the idea of learning archery through Zen, so he was
totally relaxed and was watching, just watching how the master took the bow in his hand and how
he totally relaxed as if not concerned at all whether the arrow reaches to the target or not, with no
tension and with no desire, being just playful and relaxed.

He had been seeing the master for three years, but because he was full of desire he could not see
that his archery was totally different: the value is not in the target, the value is in your gesture, in you.

Are you relaxed? Are you total? Is your mind absolutely silent? A different orientation... because
the archery is not important, the meditation is important. And a man of meditation, although he does
not care about the target, simply reaches the target, with no mind, in utter clarity, in silence, relaxed.

Zen has brought a different valuation to everything. In China they have a saying that when a musician
becomes perfect, he throws away his instruments; when an archer becomes perfect, he throws away
his bows and arrows. Strange, because what is the point of becoming a perfect archer and now you
are throwing away your bows and arrows?

One man declared to the emperor of China, ”Now you have to announce it and recognize me as
the greatest archer in China. I am ready for any challenge.” And he was absolutely perfect, just like
Professor Herrigel – one hundred percent successful.
But the king said, ”Have you heard about an old archer who lives deep in the mountains?”
He said, ”I have heard about him, but I am ready to contest.”

The king laughed. He said, ”You should go and meet that old man. If he recognizes you, I will
recognize you, because I don’t know archery.... But he is a great archer, perhaps the greatest,
so you should go. Bring his recognition, and my recognition is available. But without asking him I
cannot do it. It is not a question of a challenge.”

So the man had to travel to the high mountains, where he found a very old man whose back was
bent, who could not stand straight. He asked, ”Are you the archer?”

The man said, ”I used to be. But perhaps half a century has passed, and when I became a perfect
archer, according to my master, I had to throw away my bows and arrows. You think you are a
perfect master; have you come for recognition?” The king had sent information to him that he was
sending somebody.

The man said, ”Yes.”
The old man said, ”Then why are you carrying the bow and the arrows?”
The man said, ”Strange... That’s what my mastery is.”

The old man laughed. He brought him out of his small cottage to a mountain cliff. The old man was
so old, maybe one hundred and forty years old, and the cliff went so deep underneath, thousands
of feet into the valley. If you just missed a single step or trembled or hesitated, you were gone. The
old man walked to the very edge of the cliff, half his feet hanging off the cliff, half his feet on the cliff.

The young man could not believe his eyes. The old man said, ”Now you also come. There is enough
space here for one more!” The young man tried just two steps and sat down, trembling, seeing the
situation.

The old man laughed and he said, ”What kind of archer are you? How many birds can you kill with
a single arrow?”
The young man said, ”Of course one bird.”

The old man said, ”You have to learn under a Zen master. It is a sheer wastage of one arrow, just
one bird. My master never allowed anybody the certificate unless he was able with one arrow to
bring down the whole flock.”

The young man said, ”How many can you bring down?”
He said, ”You say the number.”
Just then a flock of birds flew over. The old man just looked, and seven birds fell down.
The young man said, ”My God!”

The old man said, ”When you can look with totality, your very eyes become arrows. But you are a
novice; you could not come to the edge of the cliff. If you are trembling inside, then your archery
cannot be perfect. You may manage to hit the targets, but that is not the point. The point is that you
have an untrembling total presence. Then your total presence becomes as sharp as any arrow.

”That’s why the ancient proverb: When the musician becomes perfect, he throws away the musical
instruments. Now his very voice, his very being is musical; now the very air around him has a music.
And when the archer becomes perfect, his untrembling totality becomes almost a death ray, if he
looks towards a flock of birds, or a flock of animals.”

The master said, ”You go back and learn from this point. The target is not the target; you are the
target. Become total – and if I am alive, I will visit you after five years to see whether I can give you
the recognition. Or if I am gone, my son will come after five years. He is as great an adept as I am,
and you will be able to recognize him, because whatever I can do with my eyes, he can also do.”
After five years the old man came. These five years the archer tried his best to be total, and he
succeeded. The old man asked, ”Where are your bows and arrows?”

He said, ”It must be two years by now, but it seems like centuries have passed and I have not seen
the arrows and the bow. Now I can do what you were able to do.”
Rinzai: Master of the Irrational 107 Osho
CHAPTER 7. THERE IS NO FINAL DESTINATION

The old man did not ask for a test, he simply gave the recognition. He said, ”I can see in your eyes
the unwavering totality. I can see in your body the spontaneous relaxedness. You can go to the king
and tell him that the old man gives the recognition, and just for your recognition I have come down
from the hills.”

Zen brings a new valuation into everything. It is not a life-renouncing religion, it is a life-transforming
religion. It transforms everything, it negates nothing. But one thing has to be remembered:

unconditionality, totality, spontaneity – strange values, because no religion talks about them, and
they are the authentic values that will give you the alchemy to change your being.

All religions talk about formalities, etiquette, manners. They are all concerned with your polished
personality. They make you pretenders, they make you actors, but they don’t change your center.

This a beautiful anecdote, and Kyozan is saying, ”WHEN ONE WINS, ONE WINS
UNCONDITIONALLY.” There was no desire to win, one was simply playful, enjoying the very art
and enjoying the meditativeness and spontaneity. Now whatever happens, that is not the concern.

Of course when two persons will be fighting, one will be defeated, one will be victorious. What
does it matter who is victorious and who is defeated? All that matters is whether both are at
the same degree of concentration, at the same degree of unconditionality.

Whoever is higher in
unconditionality – he may be the defeated one, but according to Zen he is at a higher point of
consciousness, and that is real victory. The formal victory is another thing.
Ikkyu wrote:

MYSELF OF LONG AGO,
IN NATURE
NON-EXISTENT:
NO FINAL DESTINATION,
NOTHING OF ANY VALUE.

He is giving you the very manifesto of Zen. MYSELF OF LONG AGO, IN NATURE... I have
disappeared in nature, I don’t know when, I have not kept a diary and I don’t remember that I
was anything else at any time.

MYSELF OF LONG AGO, IN NATURE NON-EXISTENT: I don’t find myself, I find only nature. No
final destination... I am going nowhere. There is no final destination, because final destination will
mean death.

Life is a continuity always and always. There is no final destination it is going towards. Just the
pilgrimage, just the journey in itself is life, not reaching to some point, no goal – just dancing and
being in pilgrimage, moving joyously, without bothering about any destination.

What will you do by getting to a destination? Nobody has asked this, because everybody is trying to
have some destination in life. But the implications...

If you really reach the destination of life, then what? Then you will look very embarrassed. Nowhere
to go... you have reached to the final destination – and in the journey you have lost everything. You
had to lose everything. So standing naked at the final destination, you will look all around like an
idiot: what was the point? You were hurrying so hard, and you were worrying so hard, and this is
the outcome.

I have told you about one of Rabindranath’s stories. It is a song. The story says in song, ”I have
been searching for God for centuries. Sometimes he was around the moon, but by the time I reached
there he had moved to some other star. I saw him at another star, but by the time I reached there
he had moved again. This went on and on, but there was great joy in that he is there, and one day I
am going to find him. How long can he hide? How long can he escape?

”And it happened that one day I reached a house where there was a board saying that this was the
house of God. I had a great sense of relief that my destiny was fulfilled. I went up the steps and I
was just going to knock on the door when I became aware that, ‘Just wait, have a second thought!
What are you going to do if God comes and opens the door? What will you do next?’”

Your whole life has been a journey, a pilgrimage, finding, searching. You are trained as a runner
since millions of years, and suddenly you meet God and you don’t have anything to say. What will
you say?

Have you ever thought that if you meet God by chance, neither will you have anything to say, nor will
he have anything to say? You unnecessarily burned yourself out, finished. Final destination means
ultimate death.

Ikkyu is right when he says, ”NO FINAL DESTINATION, NOTHING OF ANY VALUE” – everything
is just to enjoy and dance and sing. But don’t ask about value; don’t ask what is virtue and what is
good. Rejoice in everything, and go on in different pilgrimages knowing perfectly well that life is not
going to end anywhere, the journey will continue, the caravan will continue.

There is no place where
the road ends.

RINZAI: MASTER OF THE IRRATIONAL, OSHO

lighthouse

04-05-2012, 10:48 AM

"The person’s essential quality that differentiates him from things is his freedom; and possession, ownership, destroys freedom. So on the one hand you think you are loving a person; on the other hand, you are destroying his very essence.”---OSHO

Beautiful.
That freedom, from the first small glimpse I had of it,
is something I always keep in front of my eyes.
I would never even wanna try to take that away from the one I love.

im back to being a few pages behind on this thread but i have some more questions.

Join the club. This goes too fast. :D

A man when he becomes a father is no longer the same man. A child is born, but we miss one point completely; the moment the child is born, the mother is also born.

Relationship is created by you, but then, in its turn, relationship creates you. Two persons meet, that means two worlds meet. It is not a simple thing but very complex, the most complex.

When centers meet, it is called love. When peripheries meet, it is acquaintance. You touch the person from the without, just from the boundary, then it is acquaintance. Many times you start calling your acquaintance your love. Then you are in a fallacy. Acquaintance is not love.

Love is very rare. To meet a person at his center is to pass through a revolution yourself, because if you want to meet a person at his center, you will have to allow that person to reach to your center also. You will have to become vulnerable, absolutely vulnerable, open. It is risky. To allow somebody to reach your center is risky, dangerous, because you never know what that person will do to you. And once all your secrets are known, once your hiddenness has become unhidden, once you are exposed completely, what that other person will do, you never know. The fear is there. That's why we never open.

Fear-oriented living can never lead you into deep relationship. You remain afraid, and the other cannot be allowed, cannot be allowed to penetrate you to your very core. To an extent you allow the other and then the wall comes and everything stops. The love-oriented person is the religious person. The love-oriented person means one who is not afraid of the future, one who is not afraid of the result and the consequence, who lives here and now. Don't be bothered about the result. That is the fear-oriented mind. Don't think about what will happen out of it.

Love is a rare flowering. It happens only sometimes. Millions and millions of people live in the false attitude that they are lovers. They believe that they love, but that is their belief only.

Sex is possible for all. Acquaintance is possible for all. Not love. When you are not afraid, then there is nothing to hide, then you can be open, then you can withdraw all boundaries. And then you can invite the other to penetrate you to the very core.

And remember, if you allow somebody to penetrate you deeply, the other will allow you to penetrate into himself or herself, because when you allow somebody to penetrate you, trust is created. When you are not afraid, the other becomes fearless. In your love, fear is always there. The husband is afraid of the wife, the wife is afraid of the husband. Lovers are always afraid. Then it is not love. Then it is just an arrangement of two fearful persons depending on each other, fighting, exploiting, manipulating, controlling, dominating, possessing -- but it is not love.

Kabir has said somewhere: I look into people. They are so much afraid, but I can't see why -- because they have nothing to lose.

Just try to find out: somewhere, something must be wrong in you, and drop that wrongness. It is going to be difficult because it is going to be against the ego. It is going to be difficult because it will hurt your pride. It is going to be difficult because this will not be dominating, possessing. You will not be more powerful through possessing the other. This will destroy your ego -- that's why it is going to be difficult.

But destruction of the ego is the point, the goal. From wherever you like to approach the inner world -- from love, from meditation, from yoga, from prayer -- whatsoever the path you choose, the goal is the same: the destruction of the ego, throwing the ego away. Through love it can be done very easily. And it is so natural! Love is the natural religion.

MY WAY ,THE WAY OF THE WHITE CLOUDS, OSHO

Heartbeatsalute, thank you so very much for this post. :)

heartbeatsalute

04-05-2012, 05:22 PM

Beautiful.
That freedom, from the first small glimpse I had of it,
is something I always keep in front of my eyes.
I would never even wanna try to take that away from the one I love.

Totally agree lighthouse .

Join the club. This goes too fast. :D

LOL

Heartbeatsalute, thank you so very much for this post. :)
Great!
important that you grasped the meaning of it lighthouse. :)

Question: When I gave birth to my first child, I felt I was also born In a way. Can you talk about the birth of a mother?
Osho : Whenever a child is born, not only is the child born -- that is one part of it -- the mother is also born. Before that she was an ordinary woman; through the birth she becomes a mother. On one side the child is born, on the other side the mother is born. And a mother is totally different from a woman: a gap exists, her whole existence becomes qualitatively different. Before that she may have been a wife, a beloved, but suddenly that is no longer so important. A child is born, a new life has entered: she becomes a mother.

That's why husbands are always afraid of children. Basically they never like children because a third party enters into the relationship -- not only enters, but the third party becomes the center. And after that the woman is never the same wife, she is different. After that, if a husband really wants love he has to become just like a son, because this woman who has become a mother can never be an ordinary wife again. She has become a mother, you cannot do anything about it now. The only thing left is that you become a son to her.

That is the only way you can get her love again, otherwise the love will be moving towards her son. When a woman becomes a mother, something tremendously meaningful has happened to her. For a woman it is almost a new birth. It is something which is very difficult for a man to understand unless he is creative . If he has given birth to a poem, he feels tremendously happy. Nobody can understand what has happened just by composing a poem. But its not just a poem. Much was in turmoil in him, and the poem has settled many things.

But it is nothing compared to a woman when she becomes a mother -- nothing. A poem is a poem. The moment it is born it is already dead. When it is inside the poet it has life. The moment it is expressed it is a dead piece of furniture. You can hang it on the wall. You can throw it on the rubbish heap, or whatsoever you want, but it is no more alive. When a woman gives birth to a child, it is life. When she looks into the eyes of the child, she looks into her own being. When the child starts growing, she grows with the child.

heartbeatsalute

04-05-2012, 06:01 PM

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Shiva-Shakti/osho_women_anger.jpg

Osho on Pain of Witch and Beauty of Witches

Question: I have felt inside me a deeply Buried, Revengeful, Cold Rage against all men who have ever forced, Raped Killed Or Hurt Women. This feels like something I have been Carrying within for lives. Please help me uncover and Befriend this old witch.

Osho : The first thing to be clear about is that it was Christianity who condemned the word`witch'; otherwise, it was one of the most respected words, as respected as `mystic' -- a wise man. It simply meant a wise woman, the parallel to a wise man. But in the Middle Ages, Christianity came to face a danger. There were thousands of women who were far wiser than the bishops and the cardinals and the pope. They knew the art of transforming people's lives.

Their whole philosophy was based on love and transformation of sexual energy -- and a woman can do that more easily than a man. After all, she is a mother and she is always a mother. Even a small baby girl has the quality of motherliness. The quality of motherliness is not something connected with age, it is part of womanhood. And the transformation needs a very loving atmosphere, a very motherly transfer of energies. To Christianity, it was a competitor. Christianity has nothing to offer in comparison to it -- but Christianity was in power.

It was a man's world up to then; and they decided to destroy all witches. But how to destroy them? It was not a question of killing one woman but thousands of women. So a special court was created for enquiry, to find out who was a witch. Any woman said by Christians to have had an influence on people and who people respected was caught and tortured -- so much so, that she had to confess.

They wouldn't stop torturing her until she confessed that she was a witch. And according to the Christian mind, to Christian theology, the meaning of witch was changed: a witch is one who is having a sexual relationship with the devil. You don't hear any more of any devil having a relationship with any woman. Either the devil has become a Christian monk, a celibate, or... what has happened to the devil? Who was it that was having sexual relationships with thousands of women? And these women were mostly old women. It doesn't seem to be rational.

When young and beautiful women were available, why should the devil go to the old, the very old women? But to become a witch, it was a long training, a long discipline, a long experience. So by the time a woman was a witch -- a wise woman -- she was old; she had sacrificed everything to attain that wisdom, that alchemy. They forced these poor old women into saying that they were having sexual intercourse with the devil. Many of them tried hard... but the torture was too much.

They tortured these women in many ugly ways, just for one thing: they should confess. The women continued to try to say that they had nothing to do with the devil, that there was nothing to confess. But nobody listened to them; they went on torturing them. You can make anybody confess anything if you go on torturing him. A point comes when he feels it is better to confess rather than to unnecessarily suffer the same torture every day. And it would have continued for his whole life.

Once a woman confessed that she was a witch and was having a sexual relationship with the devil, her torture was stopped and then she was presented before a court -- a special court made by the pope -- and before the court she was to now confess. And once she confessed before the court, the court was able to punish her -- because it is the greatest crime in the eyes of Christianity. In fact, even if the woman was having a sexual relationship with the devil, it is none of the business of anybody else -- and it is not a crime, because she is not harming anybody.

And the devil has never complained to any police station, "That woman is dangerous." On what authority was Christianity burning these women? The only punishment was to be burned alive so that no other woman dared to be a witch again. They destroyed thousands of women and completely removed a very significant part of humanity. And the wisdom that those women contained -- their books, their methods, their techniques of transforming man, transforming man's energy....

Don't think that witch is a bad word. It is more respectable than `pope' -- because I don't think a pope is a man who can be called wise; they are just parrots and nothing else. It is possible that it may be connected with your past life, and the wound has been so deep that still some remembrance in your unconscious goes on reminding you. And that creates the hate for men, because what was done to you was done by men. So it is a simple association, but that association has to be dropped. It was not done by men, it was done by Christians.

And the Christians have done so many crimes, and they go on doing them. It is unbelievable. And they go on talking about truth,talking about god...speaking lies..And these are religious people trying in every way to deceive the world, to deceive the human mind, to pollute with ugly lies. So don't be against men as such; just being against christian astrocities is enough... For two thousand years Christianity has been killing people in the name of religion, in the name of God, in the name of Christ, in the name of the nation -- so it is perfectly right to condemn them.

But not every man is a Christian. To be a Christian is a degradation; it is becoming subhuman. But it will be good to go through a hypnotic process to find out more clearly. Perhaps you may remember what were the techniques of the witches -- how they functioned, how they managed to change people -- because unless they were a danger to Christianity, Christianity would not have killed them. It was a real danger, because Christianity has nothing to offer in comparison.

heartbeatsalute

04-05-2012, 06:06 PM

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Shiva-Shakti/osho_on_tantrasex.jpg

Osho Discourse on Men

Question: I always hear you saying nice things about the Women. Could you Not stick up for the Men once in a while?
Osho: It is a very difficult question. I could not sleep the whole night. I tried and tried hard to find something nice about men, but I have to admit to you there is nothing that can be said.

You can see for yourself. An interviewer for a ladies' magazine is questioning a famous British general about his sex life. "Excuse me, sir," she begins, "but can you recall the last time you had relations with your wife?"
His upper lip stiffens for a moment and then he says, "Yes, of course I can, it was nineteen forty-five."

After a moment's silence the woman says, "That was a long time ago."
The general glances at his watch and says, "Not so long really. It is only twenty-one fortynine."

Man is a funny thing. If any of you find anything nice about man, please inform me. I accept my failure absolutely. The world suffers too much from conflict because of male energy and the domination by it. The balance is needed. I am not saying that the male energy is not needed at all; it is needed, but in proportion. Right now, ninety-nine percent is male energy and the woman exists only on the margin. She is not the main current of life, hence there is strife, struggle, fight, war. That energy has brought humanity to the brink of total suicide.

It can happen any day, unless the feminine energy is released to balance it. That is the only hope. The third world war can be avoided only if feminine energy is released into the world to balance male energy; otherwise there is no way. It cannot be avoided by peace marches and protests against war, because that too is male energy! Have you not watched protesters? -- they are as violent as anybody can be, and each peace march turns into a riot. Sooner or later they are burning buses, throwing stones at the police.

They were there shouting for peace, but in their very shout is war. The masculine energy can talk about peace but can only prepare for war. It goes on saying that we have to fight to protect peace. Now look at the absurdity: we have to go to war, otherwise there will be no peace in the world. To attain peace we go into war. That's how we have been going into war down the ages and peace has not come. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars. Not a single day passes when there is not war somewhere or other.

Sometimes it is Vietnam, sometimes it is Israel, sometimes it is Kashmir, sometimes it is something else, but the war continues. And it is not only a question of changing the political ideology of the world -- that won't help because all those ideologies are masculine. The feminine energy has to be released. That can bring balance. The moon has been neglected too much, the sun has become too prominent. The moon has to be brought back to life. And with the moon is not only the woman: with the moon is all poetry too, all aesthetics, all love, and all that belongs to the heart, comes from the moon. All that is intuitive feeds on the moon.

Remember this. And in each being, man or woman, both energies exist -- the sun and the moon. The emphasis has to be towards the moon. We have leaned too much towards the sun; it is destroying us. Just to keep balance we have to lean to the opposite direction, and slowly slowly one has to be exactly in the middle -- the moon in one hand, the sun in the other, but both equal. I declare man and woman equal, not because of any political reason: I declare them equal for some existential reason. They have to be equal, otherwise life will be destroyed.

So find the woman in you. Feed it, nourish it, help it to grow. Don't be shy of it and don't think 'I am a man.' Nobody is simply a man and nobody is simply a woman; both are both. It has to be so: half of your being has been contributed by your father and half by your mother. You are the meeting of these two energies. You cannot be just man, you cannot be just woman.

Absorb the woman, enhance and help the woman; become more soft, receptive, passive, loving. Because meditation comes easy when one is passive. It is not an active approach towards life. It is just waiting in openness. Meditation comes -- it cannot be brought, it cannot be conquered. One has to surrender to it. That is the meaning of the feminine....

heartbeatsalute

04-05-2012, 06:16 PM

http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/Osho.html
Osho on different topics.

heartbeatsalute

04-05-2012, 06:43 PM

http://www.totalbhakti.com/wallpaper/image/thum/Osho-Dhara-2188.jpg

Peaks beyond peaks unending

20 April 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN YOU SAID THAT IF WE DON'T ACHIEVE TOTAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN
THIS LIFE, WE WILL HAVE TO START FROM THE VERY BEGINNING AGAIN, AND
GO THROUGH THE WHOLE EVOLUTION OF MANKIND ONE MORE TIME, I WAS
VERY TOUCHED. IS IT POSSIBLE THAT WE WILL TOTALLY LOSE THESE FEW
GLIMPSES OF LIGHT, BEAUTY, AND CONSCIOUSNESS THAT WE'VE GOT
THROUGH BEING SANNYASINS?

Antar Ashiko, it is a very complicated question. Whatever you achieve in this life will
remain with you, but it has to be an achievement not just a glimpse. And there is a great
difference between an achievement and a glimpse. You can see the Himalayan peaks from
thousands of miles away -- it is a glimpse; but to reach those peaks will be an achievement.
A glimpse helps you to move onward, towards achievement; but unless something
becomes a crystallized experience in your life, it is going to be lost -- you will have to start
from the very beginning.

There will be a little difference, and that will be that in your unconscious a shadow of your
past life, a faraway echo -- as if you have seen something -- will remain.

And when you again
get the glimpse you may feel that this is not new, I have known it before.

But otherwise, only
crystallized achievements go with you, consciously, into the other life ... knowingly, not just a
dark shadow, a faraway echo in the unconscious, but consciously knowing that these
Himalayan peaks exist, and you have been on those peaks. There will be no doubt about it, no
wavering about it, no question about it.

You are asking, "Is it possible that we will totally lose these few glimpses of light, beauty,
and consciousness that we have got through being sannyasins?" Such glimpses you have got
in many lives before too, and you have lost them. They never became part of your being; they
remained only beautiful memories. But the memories are not achievements. It is as if you have
seen something in a dream -- perhaps it may be true, perhaps it may not be true.

So if you feel that there is something happening now, make every effort that it does not
remain only a glimpse but becomes an actual experience, becomes part of your being. Only
then can it go with you into another life.

It is possible to take all your experiences with you into another life, and never to begin
from scratch but always to begin where you had left off in the past life. But be clear that just a
glimpse is very fragile, just a glimpse is very superficial. Howsoever touching it may be in the
moment, even tomorrow you may start doubting whether it really happened or you imagined
it. And the life after this life is a faraway journey.

Glimpses are simply incentives to move towards crystallization. Make it an experience so
deep that it becomes part of you, and there is no way to forget it or to lose it. Don't remain
satisfied with glimpses. Enjoy them, but use them only as an indicator towards greater things
to happen.

To see something from far away is one thing, and to become that thing is totally another. A
glimpse of love is just like a breeze that passes within seconds; a glimpse of silence is just like
the fragrance of a rose flower that you felt for a moment, and now you don't know where it has
gone.

When I say, "Crystallize your experience," I mean it is not enough to have beautiful
glimpses. It is good, but not good enough. You should become the fragrance of the rose itself;
the glimpse was only an arrow pointing towards the possibility -- it did its work, but you
remain there. In the past life also, many times you have come across many beautiful
experiences and right now you don't know even that there have been past lives.

Only once in a while you see somebody, and you have a very strange feeling, almost
weird, as if you have seen this man before -- and certainly not in this life. You come to a
place, and suddenly you are startled, as if you had come to this place before too -- although
certainly not in this life. Everything seems to be known, but has been dormant in your
unconscious.

Life has a mechanism that whenever a person dies, unless he is enlightened, he becomes
almost unconscious; he goes into a coma before death, actual death, happens. So he knows
nothing about the death, and he remains in a state of coma till he is born again. All those nine
months in the mother's womb are a state of coma; the child is fast asleep twenty-four hours a
day for nine months.

It rarely happens that somebody dies consciously. It happens only to great meditators, who
know well the path death will be coming on because in their meditations they have traveled on
the path again and again -- it is the same path. As they go deep in their meditation the body is
left far away, mind is left far away, the heart is left far away; only a beautiful silence -- fully
alert and conscious -- remains.

The same happens when you die. If you have been meditating, then death is not a new
experience. You will be surprised that in your meditation you have been dying every day, and
you have been coming back to life every day. Such a person dies very consciously, so he
knows what death is -- and such a person remains conscious in the mother's womb. He is also
born consciously. From his very first moment on the earth, he knows all that has passed before
in the past life, and he remembers it.

I have come across many children ... And this happens most particularly in India, because
outside India -- where Christianity is prominent or Judaism is prominent or Mohammedanism
is prominent -- they have conditioned the mind that there is only one life.

They don't know
anything about meditation. They have substituted meditation with prayer, and prayer is
praising a fictitious god; it is very childish.

Meditation needs no god -- you are enough. You are a reality, and you explore your reality
to the deepest core.

In India all the religions are agreed on one point; they differ in their philosophies, they
differ on every other thing, but on one thing they are all agreed -- that life is a continuity;
death comes millions of times. Death is only a change of the body, a change of the house, and
this process goes on -- unless you become totally enlightened. Then there is no need to enter
another womb, because life was just a school, a training; you have completed it. Your
enlightenment is the culmination of your education about existence. Now you need not enter
into another body. You can enter into the womb of the universe itself -- you are prepared for
it.

So whenever you are having glimpses, don't be satisfied with them. Your glimpses should
create great discontent in you, not content. They should create a longing that what is seen far
away you would like to come closer, and closer, and closer. You don't want just to see it, even
from c closeness; you want to become it.

You can become love, you can become silence, you can become joy, you can become all
these experiences: beauty, light, consciousness. These are not things that you cannot become;
they are your potentials. So take every glimpse to its ultimate end. That's what I call
crystallization.

Once it is crystallized, once you have known yourself to be love, yourself to be light,
yourself to be consciousness, then there is no problem of forgetting it. Then these experiences
will go with you. And in your future life you will be growing further ahead, from
consciousness to superconsciousness; you will be going beyond these experiences. But if you
remain satisfied with your glimpses, there is every danger they will be erased.

Death is such a
shock and such a surgery and such a long coma that when you wake up, you will have
forgotten all those glimpses.

"Someone stole my bike," complained a priest to his minister friend.
"Bring up the Ten Commandments in your sermon tomorrow, and as soon as you mention,

'Thou shalt not steal', look around in your congregation; you will find the guilty party. Invite
him to come forward. Tell him that this is the way to confess, and this is the way to get the
forgiveness of God," the minister said confidently.

The next day the priest visited the minister and happily reported that he had found his bike.
"Yes", he went on, "when I came to 'Thou shalt not commit adultery' I remembered where I
had left it."

THE GOLDEN FUTURE, OSHO

heartbeatsalute

04-05-2012, 06:57 PM

http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Therapy/osho_on_vegetarian_food.jpg

Osho - Is Vegetarian Food essential for Spiritual Growth

Question - What about Food? Is it not absolutely essential to be a Vegetarian for Spiritual Growth?
Osho - What you do is never essential, what you are is always essential. Being is essential, doing is not essential. Being is essential, having is not essential. Consciousness is essential, character is not essential -- because it is not character that creates consciousness but consciousness that creates character.

If you are religious, if you are spiritual, things will change around you. You may become a vegetarian, you may not. It depends -- people are different. But to be a vegetarian cannot be an essential condition for being spiritual. There have been spiritual people who were vegetarians, and there have been spiritual people who were not. And it is good that life consists of variety, it is good that life consists of different kinds of people. Otherwise it would be utterly boring.

Just think -- only Mahaviras, roaming around the earth, naked vegetarians. No Krishna, no Christ, no Buddha, no Mohammed, no Mansoor. It will be a very poor world, it will be really ugly. And remember, Mahavira is beautiful but too many Mahaviras won't be beautiful. God never creates the same person again. And the reason is that once is enough, once is more than enough. God is completely satisfied. He never repeats, He never duplicates. He believes only in originals, He has no carbon copies.

So I cannot say that food has any essential thing to contribute to your spirituality. But your spirituality may change your food habits. That too cannot be predicted; I keep your freedom intact. less used to drink, and he is not less spiritual because of that. Patanjali will never be able to even conceive of a spiritual man drinking, but that is Patanjali's angle of seeing things. Jesus will not be able to understand: 'Why is Patanjali not drinking? If Patanjali cannot drink, then who else? If Patanjali cannot celebrate, then who else? He should be dancing, he should be singing, he should be celebrating -- he has arrived.'

But celebrations are also different. Somebody may celebrate by fasting, somebody may celebrate by feasting. People are different. If you can remember this you will never become a fanatic. Otherwise the danger is always there: on the path of spiritual growth the greatest danger is that of fanaticism. All so-called religions are fanatic, because they only allow that which THEIR scripture says, and THEIR founder says -- everything else has to be denied. That is making life very very limited. And life is unlimited, it is an infinity.

You ask: WHAT ABOUT FOOD? I don't talk about food, I talk about you -- the real thing is to happen there. When it has happened then I am not worried about you; then whatsoever you do will be right. Let me say it in this way: There is no act which is right and no act which is wrong, there are only persons who are right and persons who are wrong. When the right person does something it is right, when a wrong person does something it is wrong. Right and wrong are not qualities of any act -- all depends on who is behind the act.

For example, it happened: Buddha said to his disciples, to his monks and nuns, 'Whatsoever is given to you, you have to eat it. You should not demand, you should not become a burden on the society. You should simply go and stand before a house and if the people feel like giving they will give. You are not even to ask and you are not to give the details of what you need. Whatsoever is given, accept it in deep humbleness, gratitude, and eat it.' One day it happened, a monk was returning after begging food from the town and a crow flew upon him and dropped a piece of meat into his begging-bowl. Now, Buddha had said 'Whatsoever is given...'

The monk was disturbed. He had not asked for this meat; it had fallen, it was in the bowl, he had not desired it. What should he do? He started thinking 'Should I throw it away or should I eat it? -- because Buddha has said "Don't throw anything away. People are starving, food is always a scarcity. Don't throw anything away; eat whatsoever is given." Should I throw it away or should I take it?'

The problem was such that there was no precedent. So he thought 'It is better to ask the Buddha.' When the assembly gathered he brought his begging-bowl and he asked the Buddha 'What am I supposed to do?'

Buddha closed his eyes, for a moment he meditated. He meditated because of two seasons. One: if he says 'Throw it away' then he will be creating a precedent of throwing things away. Then later on -- such is the cunning mind of man -- people will think that Buddha has given the freedom, if you feel that something is wrong you can throw it away. But then they will start throwing away foods that they don't like. That will be a wastage . And then he thought 'Crows are not going to drop meat every day. This is just an accident and the accident should not be made a rule -- it is an exception.' So he said 'It's okay. Whatsoever is given, even if the crow has dropped meat, you have to eat it.'

That transformed the whole Buddhist history -- in subtle ways. The monks and the nuns started spreading the news to people that whatsoever is given, even if meat is given, they would accept it. And Buddhism became a meat-eating religion just because of that crow. You see? The crows are more important than your Buddhas. They transform things. Man is so stupid that he will follow a crow rather than a Buddha.

I don't give you any particular instructions, what to eat or what not to eat. I simply teach you one thing: become more and more conscious, become more and more aware, and let your awareness decide.

Life is so complicated that if I start giving you details about everything -- 'This has to be eaten and this has not to be eaten' -- it will never be a complete guide for you; things will always be left. You can look into Jaina scriptures, they give every detail. That's why Jaina scriptures are not even worth reading. They go into such unnecessary detail: how many clothes the monk should have, how much food he should eat, how he should eat -- standing or sitting. How he should beg, how many things he should accept, how many monks should go walking together for their begging, whether nuns and monks should be together or not, or how much distance should be kept -- the details are infinite. If a nun is ill, whether the monk should touch her body or not.

Then there are details within details: if she is old or young -- if she is old it is okay, if she is young, no. When a nun is taking a bath should the monk look at her or not... Now, this goes on and on. The scripture doesn't seem to be religious at all, it is concerned with such stupidities. And still it cannot be complete -- because what about whether a monk should go to a movie or not? There were no movies, so you are at a loss; you have to decide yourself. Whether a monk should see a photograph of a nun or not... Now, there were no photographs -- and you cannot add anything to the scripture, it cannot be improved upon. So you have to always invent things for yourself.

When one has to find one's own way, why create this jungle of details? I simply give a light to you -- and that light will be enough, you will be able to find your path. I don't give you the map and I don't give you instructions: 'First go a hundred miles this way, then move to the right and then to the left.' The journey is such that no details are possible. I would like to share a parable with you.

AMONG the youth of the country, there began a resurgence of interest in foods. Many different diet theories were offered, telling what was best to eat, and how and when to eat it. And with these theories came fierce loyalties, for eating is a very serious subject. One young man said 'Whole grains only, with fruit and nuts.' And his girlfriend added 'Vegetables and fruits don't mix.' Her roommate believed 'No vitamin C, but lots of D and E.' And her cousin advised 'Fast one day out of every ten.' And she had a friend who worked in a health food store, who said 'Minerals are the key.' And every evening she ground her teeth on a tablespoon of highly-advertised garden soil, attractively packaged.

Some discovered miraculous healing properties in certain foods, and for a time there were shortages of figs, apricot kernels, yak butter, sawdust and earthworms. But if these foods could be modified to bring out all their natural goodness, they might be even better. One young man read that vitamins are trapped within the cell walls of foods, and he began to prepare his meals with a blender. He blended bread, fruit and cheese with wheat germ, kelp and strawberry yogurt, and each of his meals came out a nutritious grey glue.

Then the dietary habits became more exotic. One very serious man learned that certain yogis can exist on air alone; and he tried it for a time. And he had a close friend who learned of an ancient practice of turning the stomach inside-out to improve digestive secretions. But he was forced to stop when the neighbors complained of the unusual sounds.

Now, the confusion was caused by the fact that each theory was a little bit true. And people changed from diet to diet and felt guilty because they continued to like the things they weren't supposed to. Yet their diet loyalties remained strong and, as these things go, each one believed his current diet to be the panacea for all mankind. And for all the debates heard throughout the land, the most frequent and heated was the question of vegetarian-versus -meat. One day, a wise man arrived in the city. A crowd gathered around him and he was asked all manner of questions. He was asked about Mind, Soul, God, Stars, Love, Fate, and the significance of the Sanskrit language. These were all non-controversial topics. But then a young man asked 'Should I eat meat?'

A hush fell over the crowd, for this was important. The wise man answered with another question: 'How do you feel when you eat meat?'
The young man thought about that for a moment, then said 'Well, not as good.'
And the wise man replied 'Then don't eat it.' And there was a murmur of approval from the vegetarians in the crowd.

Then another young man rose and said 'I like meat and I feel fine when I eat it.'
And the wise man said 'Fine, then eat it.' And there was a murmur of approval from the meat lovers. Then the voices became louder and the debate started anew.

Just then the wise man started to laugh. At first it was a chuckle that softened the serious crowd so that several grinning faces were seen. And the sight of the wise man sitting on the little dais laughing was so infectious that the crowd began to laugh with him. And as it often happens, there was one among the crowd that had an especially funny laugh, and this so tickled the wise man that he began to shake up and down until he nearly fell off his seat. And this so pleased the crowd that an enormous peal of laughter arose and echoed through the streets. And passers by, without knowledge of what had caused it, were so affected by the pleasing sound that they stopped and joined in, until a great throng of laughing people had gathered.

The sight and the sound of so many people enjoying themselves made the wise man... well, it went on and on until not one among them could remember having such a nice time. But the nicest thing of all was, on that day nobody had indigestion.

Remember that. Whatsoever goes well with you is fine. Don't impose unnecessary structures upon your being. You are already in a prison, don't create bigger prisons for yourself. Although remember one thing: work as diligently as possible for becoming more conscious. Forget about character; character is a concern of the stupid and the mediocre. Let your whole concern be consciousness. And when you are conscious, when you are a little bit alert, aware, when a light starts burning in your inner being, when you are able to see, many things will change. Not according to any structure, not according to any ideology, not according to any fanaticism -- but according to your own understanding, things are bound to change.

My own feeling is -- remember, it is my feeling; it need not be a commandment to you -- my own feeling is that if you become more and more alert and aware, you will find it less and less possible to eat things which depend on hurting animals, which depend on destroying animals' lives. But this is not a commandment, and this has nothing to do with spirituality. It simply has something to do with an aesthetic sense.

To me, the question is more about a esthetics than about spirituality. In that sense I will call Mahavira more aesthetic than Jesus. Spiritual they both are, but Mahavira is more aesthetic. It is simply ugly to eat meat -- not unspiritual, remember, not a sin -- just ugly, dirty. To depend on killing animals -- just visualize -- for your small taste buds which can be satisfied in many other ways, torturing millions of animals around the earth is anesthetic. You are not showing poetry, you are not showing feelings.

Spirituality is possible. But a man should not only be spiritual, he should have some aesthetic sense too. The question is like this: If you ask me 'Is it essential to have a Picasso painting in my bedroom to become spiritual?' I will say it is not essential. You can become spiritual without a Picasso painting; no painting is needed. But having a painting in the room is aesthetic -- it creates a milieu of art around you, a sense of beauty. And once you understand this difference you will not be a fanatic, because art does not create fanaticism. In that way, art is more non-violent than your so-called religions -- they create fanaticism.

If you write poetry, if you paint or if you dance, it has nothing to do with spirituality. Just by painting you will not become spiritual. A man need not be a painter to become a spiritual person; spirituality is apart. But a spiritual man may like to paint. Zen masters have been painting and they have created wonders. Zen masters have been writing poetry, and their haiku are some of the greatest insights into beauty, into splendor, into reality.

Nobody has been as penetrating as the Zen poets, and in a few small words. They have written such great poetry -- to write that poetry others need to write great books, big books; they go on writing and writing, and even then not much poetry is found. But it has nothing to do with spirituality. Spirituality is possible without being a poet, without being a dancer, without being a musician. But if you are a musician, a poet, a dancer, your life will have more fulfillment. Spirituality will be at the center and all these values will be on the circumference. You will have a far richer life. A spiritual person can be a poor person -- he may not have any capacity to enjoy music.

In fact that's what is happening in the world. If you go and see a Jaina monk and you talk about classical music he will not understand a single word of what you are talking about. And he will say 'Don't talk about worldly things to me. I am a spiritual person, I don't listen-to music.' If you talk about poetry he will not be interested. His life will be dry, it will not have juice. He may be spiritual but his life will be a desert.

And when it is possible to be spiritual and a garden too, why prefer the desert? When you can be spiritual and poetic too, why not have both? Have as many dimensions to your life as possible, have a multi-dimensional life. Become more aesthetic, more responsible. But I don't give you any details. And remember always, these are not essentials for being a spiritual person -- they will not help your enlightenment and they will not debar it. But the journey can be very very beautiful or it can be very very desert like. It all depends on you.

My own approach is to help make your journey a joy. Not only the end -- the spiritual person is only concerned with the end. He is in a hurry, impatient to reach the end; he does not bother what is happening on the roadside. And millions of flowers bloom there too, and birds sing songs and the sun rises and in the night it is full of stars. And all this too is beautiful. Let the journey also be beautiful. When you can pass through these enchanted lands, why not? But your concern should basically be for more consciousness. And whatsoever that consciousness makes luminous for you, follow it. Let your consciousness be the only law. I don't give you any other law.

OSHO

heartbeatsalute

04-05-2012, 08:47 PM

After the prison riot, the head warden calls the three ringleaders into his office
and says, "Now then, I would like to know two things:
First, why did you revolt? And second, how did you get out of the cell?"

One of the men steps forward and says,
"Warden, we rebelled because the prison food is so awful."

"I see," replies the warden. "And the cell, what did you do to break the bars?"
"The prisoner steps back in disgust and says,
"This morning's toasts!"

heartbeatsalute

04-05-2012, 08:54 PM

http://anuradhagoyal.blogspot.com/2007/02/book-of-man-by-osho.html

great post!
some more sharing with you:-
Question: Who is Osho really and why there is so much government’s propaganda against him all over the world. Should we refer to the Government offices to find more about Osho.

Answer:-

Dear Friend

I will to talk a bit more in details about Osho in this article so that we can see some new facts which are mostly untold so that now things can be settled properly. A really awakened person will always be behaved like a criminal by Ruler and Governments at his time. It is very essential symptom of a Budha. All the world political system is anti-God. It will be misunderstanding to say that there is democracy anywhere in the world yet.

There are subtle dictatorships everywhere which change after every 4-5 years and democracy is just a name used for mobcracy. Exploit the sentiments of masses and rule. This is the rule of all the politicians. All justice systems are political influenced. Our approach towards Osho is not un-prejudiced. Will you contact Office of the Attorney General of that time if you want to know about the Budhas,Awakened ones,Gurus who were crucified by administrations at the time of Jahangir or Aurangzeb in India. Will you contact Office of the Attorney General of Athenes to know why Socrates was poisoned.

If you really go and see the files at that time you will see that those people were behaved like criminals and full list of crimes were prepared against them to make an impressive case to justify the punishment. In case of Osho our approach is totally biased . There was a list of 35 crimes prepared against Osho. No cases could be proved and only 2 cases based upon which Osho was deported were related to immigration. I came across a news story sometime back when in US a newspaper published a story attaching bioterrorism and murder cases with Osho name.

The newspaper was sued by Osho Foudation New York and case was won by the Foundation as no such case was ever proved again him in any court in US. I never believe or say anything until I explore the facts first hand myself with unprejudiced and clean eyes. I read and experimented with Dances of Gurjieff . I read almost all what Krishnamurthy ever spoke. He is great but too serious and dry. I read and listened almost all what Osho spoke. To know more about the incidents which are projected in news media , I talked to Sw. Chetnya Keerti ,Editor of Osho Times Internation New Delhi who spent almost all his life with Osho, Sw. Dhanyam who is editor of monthly magazine Viha Connection from Mill Valley,California he was with Osho in Rajneeshpuram at Oregon from 1981-1985,Ma Yoga Neelam secretary of India for Osho Foundation.

I myself flew to Pune in 1994 and spent 2 months continuously experimenting with all the meditations and therapy groups available at that time. Below are some facts which you should not ignore. Mind works in negative approach and it is very receptive of negative propaganda from any source without raising a single doubt. This is the mind strategy to keep its ego alive. Mind never wants to believe that somebody else can be awakened one. The same mind will raise thousands doubts and ask questions for validity to accept anything positive. Pundits never accepted that Budha is awakened one. They presented Budha as a villain in the eyes of the people in India using negative propaganda.

That is why whole of Asia is leaned towards Budha except India. When Pundits lost all the arguments against Budha,they changed their strategy. They started saying that Budha is just copying from Gita as he is very much influenced by it. Now it is very easy to convince the mind and prove that Budha is copying from Gita because when Truth is one ,how can be the essential words about truth be so many.

It is not the words which matter, the thing which matter the most is whether the person experienced it or Not. Whether the silent explosion happened in the man or not, Whether the person is awakened one or sleeping. Any good parrot can repeat the word about truth from any scripture beautifully. Never comment about anybody saying that he is influenced by anybody else. This is a subtle cunningness to attack on the dignity and individuality of a person. Always respect everybody as an independent individual.

Most of the incidents at Rajneeshpuram which are said below are included in full details in the book ‘Jesus Crucified Again, This Time in Ronald Reagan's America” by D. Sarito which is available from any Barnes & Noble book store all over America. These are the words of Osho himself and the people who witnessed it.

Osho is the most misunderstood person in this world today as it should be the case with a man of truth. He told truth as it is. This is for the first time that religion has reached from East to the West.

This is for the first time that truth has been expressed in English as purely as 24 Karat Gold. Upto now all religions in the west were just work of translations and 2nd hand. Words of truth can never be translated because the spirit of truth is left behind in the original language and only words are carried forward. Words without the spirit are just dead. When Jesus’s words were translated from Aramaic to Hebrew much spirit was lost. When from Hebrew it went to Greek, more loss. And when ultimately it went to English, it became far difficult to taste the original spirit of Jesus. Same happened with all other translations. It is very difficult to express truth in English as it is originally a language of science and mind. Osho developed ‘Osho English’ which is very close to English.

Osho shook whole of the world. He was one man Versus whole of the world governments. When he was in India, whole of the Indian government was against him . He exposed MurarJi Desai of his cunningness. He was banned from purchasing any land in India so that he can not set up any commune there and invite more people around him. Persons around him were tasting of something which was beyond any expression. His energy field was so strong that just sitting in his presence was more than enough to experience divine. He talked on almost all the awakened persons on the earth ever happened. His talks on Japuji are unparalleled. Through these world Nanak addressed again to whole of the humanity. People already sensed of something from another world through these words. His words in the book ‘Ik Omkar’ has become almost an essential part of every library of all over the Gurdwaras in the world.

These words are so authentic and full of juice of truth which never happened before. Osho was the most silent person in all over the world and mostly sitting with closed eyes in his room. He used to come out only for morning or evening discourse for about an hour. But still his presence disturbed whole of the world. All religious philosophies created by Pundits ,scholars,educationists lost any base in front of him. Exploitation of the humanity by Priests and Politicians were exposed like a day light. So naturally Politicians and Priests of all over the world were scared of his presence in their territory. People were singing,dancing and living a joyous life in his presence without any reason.

This haunted the ego of all the political leaders. No Political leader or Priest want anybody living a joyous life without their own blessing. These people want humanity to be miserable. It is only misery which drive people to the priests otherwise nobody will care about them. Osho reminded every person on earth that each person has his Kingdom beneath his own feet and very easy to seek it. He gave the persons around him the taste of this Kingdom. The person who loved Osho saw Budha,Krishna,Nanak,Jesus looking at them from his eyes. Osho traveled to almost all over India . He spent most of his life in train traveling to every remote place of India. His body was almost exhausted and was caught by Asthma during this travel of 30 years continuously. Polluted environment of India was not going to help him to remain in body for much long and the seekers of America and Other western countries started urging him to move to America for a short time in a suitable climate.

A 64000 acre of desert Muddy Ranch in Oregon which was on sale for years and nobody was ready to purchase was considered a suitable place by the people who invited him. But this was a desert with no greenery, no birds, no lakes ,no road and nearby place was 21 miles away of a very small population. But within 2 years this land was converted to an oasis by celebrating,singing,dancing and meditating people.

It was converted to an unique city named ‘Rajneeshpuram’ with its own buses and its own airport and a self dependent city from every respect. This was the only city in west which was totally vegetarian. There was a common kitchen for each 5000 people. Vegetarian dishes from all over the world were part of the kitchen and new vegetarian recipes were being developed continuously for a taste transition of non-vegetarian to vegetarian. There were meditation menus prepared for every day and season. New meditations techniques were discovered according to the new people’s mind lever. Soon this became a capital of spiritual world and people from all over the world started coming. All educated cream of the world gathered there. His own physician was member of Royal society of Physics and all the best musicians, singers, dancers, pets, artists, painters, craftsmen, scientists from all over the world were attracted towards this place. Average education level of that city became double of any other place of the world. During all the period Osho was in silence as he stopped speaking some years before traveling to America.

His message was silence and up to that time people gathered around him became capable enough to listen to him in silence and be nourished by his mere presence. He completely destroyed the Prophet or belief system in religion. He clearly described that each human being is fully responsible for himself and no Guru or Prophet can do anything for anybody if the person is merely following a religious belief system or rituals. The person should have real thirst and should start exploring religion as an inner science. He exposed fundamental strategies of the Govt Administration at that time. Books of Darwin were being burnt from the libraries as it was against Bible. Schools were going to be targeted by fundamentalists in the administration under the name of Religious Funds. Within a short period of 1981-1985 Rajneeshpuram invoked the attention of the whole world and became a second home of World Press.

This happy, joyful and celebrating city became the comparison factor for whole of the miserable world. Priests and Politicians started facing a big Question Mark about themselves and became jealous and their sleep got disturbed forever. Then started the strategy to spread negative propaganda about the commune. Rajneespuram was not disturbed by the world but World was disturbed by this one small city.

Now it is world famous saying that you see what you want to see. If a botanist, a poet,a shopkeeper and a thief go to a garden then a botanist will see the plants and think about their life system,a poet will see the beauty of the garden and start fantasying his poem, a shopkeeper will start thinking about the fruits and market values and a thief will start thinking about the best thing to steal and best route and time to steal. Same way different people of different psychological background spread different rumors.

A materialistic person saw just Rolls Royaces in the Rajneespuram. A sexually repressed person saw only women and attached the rumors of sexual orgies and so on. It is not surprising that Osho is mostly known as Rolls Royce man in America and as a Sex Guru in India. There are about 600 books in 54 languages in Osho’s name. His only one book on sex ‘From Sex to Super Conciousness’ attracted the world attention more than any other book. But he spoke courageously almost on every aspect of life directly without any hesitation. But wherever there are flowers there are thorns. Wherever there are Budhas or awakened ones ,there are ‘Nindaks’,’Manmukhs’ always created around them.

Sheela’s husband was dying with cancer in a short period of months. That is why he turned to a seeker and reached Pune in India. He was a sincere seeker but his wife Sheela was an outwardly person and no interest in seeking. So when his husband was meditating ,she was more oriented towards administrative works. So accordingly she raised herself to a secretary of administrative affairs of the commune in Rajneeshuram.

A Budha is never suspicious and never rejects anybody from anywhere. His compassion and love and innocence is always unconditional. Withing 5 years in commune at Rajneespuram as secretary ,about billions of Dollars flew through the Sheela’s hands and she just started behaving like a queen. Greed of money and power made her blind. She started behaving like a dictator. As Osho was in silence and only 3 others persons (His Personal physician,dentist and a caretaker) was having physical access to Osho.

Sheela tried to poison all of them so that her activities can never be exposed. She created hostility with neighbors to remain in power. When somehow news reached to Osho ,He broke his silence and started speaking and Sheela along mwith her gang of 20 ran away to other countries with huge money. All these activies of Sheela were exposed by Osho himself to the Presss for the first time which are already documented in his books.

But this was a great excuse for Politicians and Priests. Horrible words of ‘bioterrorism’,’murderer’,’sex’ etc were associated with his name and propaganda done all over the world. Sheela’a crimes were made Osho’s crimes.

List of 35 crimes was prepared under his names. He was arrested without any warrant and was forced from one prison to another for 12 days. He was made to sign under the false name of ‘David Washington’ and was made to enter the prison from back door. When he wrote his name in Hindi along with his world famous signature, this conspiracy to eliminate him was failed.

Osho’s body was exposed to radioactive and slow poison ‘thallium’ was given in his bread in jails in such doses so that no trace of proof can be left in his body. When none of the crimes could be proved, His attorney was blackmailed to accept two easy crimes, which were just immigration issues. Even his attorney was made to complete the statement ‘I am Guilty’ in the court which never happened in the history of court before . Explosive materials were found from the chair where he was made to sit after court proceedings and whole of that floor was vacated in advance. Osho was made to sit on the chair as a conspiracy to eliminate him forever if he got bail on that day. As Osho was deported and quickly came out of the court, this plan was cancelled in a hurry. A fine of 400K was imposed for these minor charges to delay the Osho’s release from Jail so that such amount can not be arranged quickly. All these incidents are documented well in detail in the above mentioned book.

Now actions of Judas are not actions of Jesus. Actions of Devdatta are not actions of Budha. Actions of Mahavir’s son in law are not of Mahavir’s. Actions of Sheela are not actions of Osho. This distinction has to be clearly understood.

But Sheela’s acts were projected to condem all the Osho and millions of people who loved him. Ruling Party can use any act for its own motivations. To make it more clear remember when a man with Hindu faith kills an Indian Leader it becomes just a matter of ‘One mad guy Nathu Ram” but when a man of Sikh faith kills an Indian leader ,whole of Sikh community is projected as villain and negative propaganda is done to spread anger against all the people of the community. See the difference. Act is same but it is projected with different motivations.

Sheela is responsible for her acts. Osho was not even a resident of Ranjeeshpuram. He was living as a guest in a far away guest house in a silent place. Just concentrating on Sheela’s activities ignoring all the positive sides of Rajneespuram is not a balanced approach. There were far more positive things in Rajneeshpuram than just a Sheela. There are also hostile activities done by people who were living near the commune which should not be ignored.

Moreover a person of truth is already condemned in his time and worshipped later on. That is what is happening in the case of Osho. A charlatan person is always worshipped in his time and condemned later on. That is what is happening to Mohan Dass Gandhi who was projected as Mahatma Gandhi by greedy people as a political deal to remain themselves in office. It is truth which prevails ultimately. Now words of Osho has become best selling all over the world. He books became best selling even in unexpected countries like Iran,Russia and China. The countries who deported him are fighting for copyrights of his books . There are no copyrights in India for Osho’s books. NewYork has all the copyrights of Osho’s works. Today no book store is complete anywhere the world without a separate section just for Osho Books/music/Video/Audio.

His books have over shadowed Indian Parliament where upto now only Mahatma Gandhi’s third class books were placed. Mahatam Gandhi started losing Mahatmahood in the eyes of India and falling back to Mr Mohan Dass Gandhi rapidly. He is being exposed more and more every day. Osho’s psychological analysis of Gandhi opened the eyes of the people for the first time and people became aware of his excesses done to his own wife and eldest son. Such facts were never brought forward before.

I would like to request the editor of this site to publish Osho’s words in every issue which will be eyes opening.

Only those communities remain progressive which change with time and don’t remain clinging with past. We should keep our vision worldwide and appreciate good persons wherever they happen and condemn the devils wherever they happen. Wherever a person is awakened we should open our windows to let the light of awakening come to our home. There is no loss in it but gain and gain only.

Negative propaganda and cunning actions of politicians can never silence a Budha. Actually these help to spread the truth. No Ruler or Government could stop the voice which was once raised from Anandpur. All oppositions only created Fathegarh Sahib,ChamKaur Sahib,DamDama Sahib and lot more. Truth can never be stopped by any Government but more it is stopped, more sharp it becomes. Ram is standing upon Ravan. If there were no Ravan,nobody would have remembered Ram. Without Ravan,there can be no Ramyan. Truth itself is silent. but actions of idiots make it a news. Destruction of Rajneespuram could not do any harm. It paved the way for Osho’s World Tour. He exposed almost each country and was deported from all over the world.

He went to the Greece which was called land of Socrates. He was stoned there as well by bishops. He reminded whole of the world that civilization is still a dream . After Rajneespuram was destroyed,The people who were living at RajneesPuram spread to all over the world and seed of truth went to whole of the earth. Now Osho communes are spreading all over the world. Communes bigger than Rajneespuram are already existing in Brazil and Europe. Osho meditation camps are happening all over the world including in India.

New generation is already angry with old generation. What has old generations given?. This ugly world of nations,armies,thousands wars,two world wars and now the preparation of third and final war. We are sitting on nuclear explosives. Now the world has accumulated the nuclear weapons which can destroy this tiny and beautiful earth 700 times. And still the piles of nuclear weapons is increasing. Any stupid politician can trigger this ugly war any time. And politicians are most retarded class of humanity. These politicians are continuously creating hostility with other nations so that humanity can remain divided and their chairs,requirement and work remain alive. Future is golden.

A new age,new humanity and a new man is born with Osho. Age of nations,armies,small families is finished . In the Golden future individuals will be living together seeking,meditating,singing,dancing and celebrating in communes. Children will be brought up together. The way child ma